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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a major health concern as the world population ages. Yet, few studies have examined what the public over the age of 50 knows about AD. This qualitative study, based on 40 in-depth interviews, examines the knowledge of AD by Flemish people between 50 and 80 years old and their cross-source engagement with information sources. Building on AD media representations and theories on media complementarity and health information behaviour, we find that respondents mostly encounter AD information non-purposively via traditional mass media and interpersonal communication, while the internet is occasionally used to purposefully seek information. Novels, personal experiences/social proximity, public figures and particularly film stand out as channels and sources of AD information, suggesting that fictional narratives, personal experiences and being able to identify with others leave lasting impressions and help to communicate and disperse AD information. However, common misconceptions and gaps in knowledge persist, including AD being considered part of the normal ageing process and old age as well as confusing AD with Parkinson's disease. The biomedical perspective and the tragedy discourse prevail among the majority of respondents, who describe AD in terms of decline, loss and death and as ‘the beginning of the end’. Only a few, typically female respondents, appear aware of the role of individual health behaviour and lifestyle choices to prevent dementia or delay its onset. The misconceptions of AD and gaps in knowledge, as well as the fact that a third of all cases of dementia might be delayed or prevented by managing lifestyle and other risk factors, stress the importance of public educational programmes and the need to emphasise and raise awareness of preventative behaviour. Overall, the findings from this study can be of help to public health communicators and dementia-awareness campaigns, as well as AD training programmes for health-care professionals and family care-givers.

Apart from their primary role as news providers in disaster situations, news media can also assume a broader social role. Drawing on a critically informed qualitative content analysis of the Belgian news reporting on a national disaster, the article reveals a twofold articulation of this social role. The first consisted in newspapers highlighting the emotional dimension with potential societal implications of raising compassion and identification. Second, we found a strong articulation of a discourse of (national) unity and community, aimed at restoring the disrupted social order in the disaster’s aftermath. Both aspects were discursively established by a dominant presence of emotional testimonies, strategies of personalization and by the use of inclusive language permeated with references to nation or community. The study highlights the important social role of journalism in disaster situations and events involving human suffering.

For many scholars, critics as well as fans, fidelity to the source material is the key word in a debate on film adaptation. This article, however, scrutinizes the issue of fidelity by reflecting on the character and story of Batman that has been so often rebooted and reinvented in its long history of comics and movies that one can wonder what the original is. Acknowledging today’s widespread cross-media exchange of narratives, the article shows that fans’ reactions to the filmic adaptations are as diverse as is the range of retellings of the Batman story. Focusing on the different interpretations of the villain Bane in the recent film franchise, it demonstrates that most fans prefer a sense of faithfulness towards the ‘essence’ of the character rather than an accurate resemblance in appearance or look. The study further acknowledges the growing importance of fans in the creative and economic process of adaptation.

Journalists domesticate news about distant events to bring such events closer to the audience and thus make them more relevant and appealing; however, knowledge about the actual audience’s reactions toward domesticated news is lacking. Central to this study is understanding how an audience makes use of domestication strategies in viewing and reacting to mediated distant suffering. Earlier text-based research has found several ways of domesticating distant suffering that can invite an audience to care. Building further on this media-centered study, 10 focus groups reveal a two-flow model of domestication, consisting of first-level domestication on the production side by journalists and second-level domestication, in which audience members themselves use strategies of domestication to make sense of distant suffering.

Within an emerging tradition of adaptation research that looks beyond fidelity-driven inquiries into exclusively literary adaptations, the case of telenovelas is exemplary for a contemporary media industry that is characterized by a cross-media and cross-border exchange of narratives. Focusing on the recent revival and international success of the telenovela genre and format, Chapter 20 reflects on a series of extra-textual features and contexts that are related to the practice of adapting global telenovela formats into different cultural environments. It approaches telenovelas as localizable yet universally appealing cultural products and narratives that undergo a tailoring process to match local expectations or to conform to local sensibilities and cultural, narrative, and production codes.

News media play an important role in giving publicity and meaning to global suffering, as it is mainly through media reports that the world perceives international risk situations. This article focuses on natural and technological disasters as part of the contemporary risk society and their (de)construction by Flemish news media. Applying quantitative content analysis, the study reveals that 70.8 per cent of all disasters occurring between 1986 and 2006 are neglected by the newspapers, for the large part disasters in less developed countries. Regarding news coverage, proximity appears to be the guiding principle. Disasters developing in western or high-income countries are well covered while distant crises in the peripheral south are struggling to get attention, unless they affect a huge number of (western) people. In general, this article supports the claim that disasters and other instances of risk are essentially media constructs: they exist only when covered by the media.

Several scholars have identified an important emotional role in news media’s covering of international disasters; inviting the audience to care for people in need who are not like us. This article addresses the question of how news media can attribute a local sense of relevance to global suffering by focusing on the journalistic practice of domestication. Following a case-based methodology, we investigate how two Belgian television stations have domesticated international disasters in 2011. As the study shows, rendering distant suffering more relevant to local audiences can be realized in several ways. A critical discourse analysis identified four key discursive modes of domestication. By drawing on these modes, news journalists try to incite involvement in their representations of distant suffering, hence inviting the local audience to relate with the distant other. Domestication can lead to possible feelings of cosmopolitanism and identification, although dominant power relations of global inequality remain largely unchallenged.

In our contemporary mediatized societies, philanthropy seems to be part of celebrities’ ontology, while celebrities have become indispensable for the charity industry. This has provoked both negative and positive appraisals, although the specific nature and consequences of celebrities’ involvement remain unclear. This article contributes to these debates by providing a systematic analysis of the roles celebrities play in telethons, which we redefine as charity media events, allowing us to study the shows in their full contextual complexity as ideological constructs. Applying qualitative content analysis, we have analysed two charity media events following the 2010 Haitian earthquake. In general, four distinct roles have been discerned: celebrities add an aura of exclusiveness and glamour, they render distant suffering relevant to domestic audiences, they function as principal motivators, and also contribute to the commodification of charity. Celebrities’ involvement thus reinforces charity media events’ dominant discourse of charitainment, in which a disaster is portrayed as a short term problem that can be remedied by supporting relief aid. Although this analysis does not disregard the usefulness and impact of fundraising campaigns and the contribution celebrities can make, it criticizes the oversimplified representation of complex issues and the decontextualized and depoliticized interpretations of distant suffering.

Cross-national and longitudinal comparative research on the media coverage of EU-related news has gained increasing interest and momentum, but is still rare and generally focuses on the EU as an intergovernmental institution, hence remaining largely ignorant of the particular flows of news in between the member states of the EU. The following analysis provides insight into the media coverage of the Polish EU presidency in the region of Flanders. For this quantitative content analysis, our scope is narrowed to three Flemish media sources. Based on a predetermined set of keywords related to the Polish case and using the newspaper search engine Mediargus, we collected 735 articles for analysis. In conclusion, the analyzed news sample devoted little attention to the Polish EU presidency. News items relevant to Poland’s presidency of the EU were concentrated around the presidential inauguration, limited in size, not necessarily political in nature, and favored objective news reporting with absence of a discernible attitude towards Poland.

Introduction. This study explores health information non-sharing behaviour in everyday social settings and interactions. The novelty and relevance of the study lies in the fact that it explores a common yet understudied information behaviour, as very few studies have examined information non-sharing. Method. Forty qualitative in-depth interviews were held in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern part of Belgium, with adults between the ages of fifty and eighty. Analysis. A contextual framework was drawn from information studies and health information and communication research, consisting of the concepts of health orientation, information avoidance, uncertainty management, to help understand health information non-sharing. Thematic analysis was employed to identify reasons for non-sharing behaviour. Results. Seven key themes or reasons emerge for health information non-sharing behaviour; health as a non-topic, avoid being labelled as ill, individual responsibility, avoid burdening others, lack of trust in others, lack of trust in the internet, and avoiding information overload. Conclusions. This study is not only more nuanced than earlier work on sharing behaviour, but also leads to new questions about outcomes of health information non-sharing. The findings further illuminate 'non-information behaviour' within information studies, while also offering insights relevant to health communication researchers and healthcare practitioners.

In 2007 nearly 17,000 people died because of natural disasters and more than 211 million others were directly affected. News media play a basic role in giving publicity to these numerous instances of global suffering as it is mainly through media reports that the world perceives international crises. Drawing upon theories on distant suffering (cf. Boltanski 1999), this study investigates the mediated representation of international crises, with a focus on natural disasters occurring in Australia, Indonesia, Pakistan and the USA. Applying critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1992; Chouliaraki 2006), this article explores how discourses of hierarchy and inequality are realised in news texts about distant suffering. The cases of analysis are nine news items that were broadcast on a public and a commercial Belgian television channel on 2 January 2006. The comparative analysis of these news texts reveals glaring differences that reflect global hierarchies of place and human life. Suffering in the ...

Inter Press Service (IPS) is widely considered to be distinctly different from the conventional news agency. Research on this alternative news agency has mainly focused on the IPS news to underwrite this statement, but much less attention has been paid to the broader production context. Drawing on the findings of twenty-six semi-structured in-depth interviews, this article explores the value and role of IPS in the digital news market of the 21st century as perceived by staff members, stakeholders and independent scholars. In general, interviewees argue that IPS and its news copy are a useful and necessary addition to mainstream news media, as well as a crucial source of information and a partner for the global civil society. However, the study also indicates that IPS will need to face a number of professional, organisational and financial challenges if the news agency aspires to continueits unique role of sensitising the public and bridging the information gap between North and South. Inter Press Service (IPS) je običajno obravnavan kot povsem drugačen od konvencionalnih tiskovnih agencij. Raziskave o tej agenciji so običajno usmerjene na proučevanje novic, s čimer naj bi bila dokazana različnost, mnogo manj pozornosti pa je namenjeno širšemu produkcijskemu kontekstu. Članek na temelju rezultatov 26 poglobljenih polstrukturiranih intervjujev obravnava vrednost in vlogo IPS na digitalnem trgu novic 21. stoletja, kot ju zaznavajo zaposleni v IPS, deležniki in neodvisni raziskovalci. Intervjuvanci vidijo v IPS koristno in nujno dopolnilo dominantnim medijem, bistveni vir informacij in partnerja globalni civilni družbi. Hkrati pa raziskava kaže, da se bo moral IPS soočiti s številnimi profesionalnimi, organizacijskimi in finančnimi izzivi, če naj bi agencija še naprej imela edinstveno vlogo v senzibilizaciji javnosti in preseganju informacijskega prepada med severom in jugom.