‘LGBTI+s severely underrepresented in sexual and reproductive health news'

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Dr. Sarphan Uzunoğlu and Hazal Sena Karaca from the NewsLabTurkey Research Hub have prepared a report on sexual and reproductive health news in Turkey by analyzing 790 news items.

Analyzing the news items published on BirGün, Cumhuriyet, Diken, Evrensel, Gazete Duvar, Sabah, Sözcü, T24, Takvim and Posta online news portals from August 1, 2021 to January 30, 2022, the study has found that LGBTI+s, adolescents and disabled people are severely underrepresented in the media in comparison to their actual population within the community.

Some of the main findings of the report regarding the Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) news in Turkey are as follows:

• "Sexual dysfunctions (17 percent)", "infertility and fertility (13.3 percent)" and "sexually transmitted diseases (9.5 percent)" were the most frequently mentioned SRH topics in the articles, whereas relatively few articles exclusively focused on "mental health (0.1 percent)", "abortion (1.3 percent)" and "family planning and birth control (2.4 percent)".
• While 28 percent of the articles have a sensational title, 26 percent of the articles contain alarmism.
• 64 percent of those consulted in SRH news are men.
• The number of genital aesthetic news (2 percent) is higher than that of news about abortion and sexual education.
• Following modern medicine methods and vaccines, alternative medicine recommendations (10 percent) tended to dominate newspaper articles. The newspapers that give the most place to suggestions within the scope of alternative medicine are Takvim (27 percent), Yeni Akit (25 percent), and Posta (16 percent).
• LGBTI+, adolescents, and disabled people are severely underrepresented in the media in comparison to their actual population within the community. Among the analyzed news, the rate of news that focuses on sexual/productive health of children/youth was 4 percent and LGBTI+s was 2 percent.
• 8 percent of the news reviewed explicitly include advertisements for a healthcare professional or organization. Infertility and fertility problems and genital aesthetics news are the most frequently seen SRH titles in advertising/PR content.
• Some news outlets displayed particular interests not covered by others. For instance, BirGün, Gazete Duvar, Evrensel, and Diken published a noticeably large number of news articles about HPV.

(EMK/SD)