| Abstract [eng] |
In times of such health crises as the COVID-19 pandemic, people begin to pay more attention to their health than before. They search for answers to health-related questions on the internet, especially on online news portals. Recognizing that more than half of the world's population is not able to differentiate accurate and reliable information from misleading one, and only 24 percent of Europeans have a high level of scientific literacy, it becomes particularly significant for journalists to provide only reliable, scientifically accurate, and detailed scientific information to the public. To examine whether this was accomplished in Lithuania during the COVID-19 pandemic, the aim was set to analyze and compare the presentation of the biological information that was important during the COVID-19 pandemic in Lithuanian online news portals. To achieve before-mentioned aim, certain objectives were defined: to describe the impact of media on people’s health, as well as difficulties that are faced by health and science journalists; to discuss journalism during COVID-19 and a problem of an infodemic; to present the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in Lithuania and biological information relevant at that time; to find out if the biological information from the fields of biomedicine, immunology, and virology relevant at the time of the pandemic was presented informatively, transparently, and scientifically accurate in Lithuanian online news portals; to compare the results of the study between Lithuanian online news portals. Publications were selected from "Delfi.lt," "15min.lt,", and "LRT.lt" news portals based on the presence of biological information about the immune system, coronavirus, COVID-19, and vaccines from coronavirus in the text, and only if it was explained using biomedicine, immunology, and virology fields related terms. In total, 81 publications from two periods of pandemic (January 30 – April 8, 2020, and November 7, 2020 – January 16, 2021) were selected. Later, quantitative and qualitative content analyses were performed. It was concluded that the scientific information in most publications from two periods on "Delfi.lt," "15min.lt,", and "LRT.lt" online news portals, was not fully informative, transparent, and scientifically accurate. The quality of "Delfi.lt" publications, considering the before-mentioned criteria, was the poorest. |
