Published by Maney Publishing (c) W. S. Maney & Son Limited A media pandemic: Influenza A in Portuguese newspapers Correspondence to: Felisbela Lopes, Communication and Society Research Centre – University of Minho, Campus de Gualtar, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal felisbela@ics.uminho.pt Felisbela Lopes, Teresa Ruão, Sandra Marinho, Rita Araújo Communication and Society Research Centre – University of Minho, Braga, Portugal Abstract On April 2009, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic alert as a consequence of the appearance of a new influenza virus, named ‘Influenza A, H1N1’. In Portugal, media coverage on this disease was intense. However, as the number of deaths within Influenza A patients turned out to be much lower than the foreseen stat- istics of national authorities, the hypothesis of a ‘media pandemic’ was suggested by national opinion makers. Looking for a better understanding of the phenomenon, we conducted a study on media coverage and news sources on Influenza A in Portugal. The study of news sources on health issues is a way of understanding health information and it has been a neglected area on Health Communication. This investigation stood on the examination of 655 articles of three national news- papers, with distinct editorial criteria. The analysis considered six variables: number of sources, geo- graphic location, genre, identification, status, and medical expertise. This task followed a quantitative methodology. The findings confirmed previous noticed trends on health information research: the power of official sources, the complexity of access to medical sources, and the lasting misunderstand- ings between journalists and the medical community. Keywords: Health communication, Influenza A, Newspapers Introduction At the beginning of 2009, the media around the world began alerting populations for the risk of an influenza pandemic. The first reports on this subject emerged in March and they referred the appearance of a new influenza virus in Mexico. In April, the World Health Organization (WHO) offi- cially recognized this disease and named it as Influenza A, H1N1, for its identification with the common flu (known as type A) and with a particu- lar subtype (the H1N1). The new virus had genes of the human, avian, and swine variant, but it presented an all new com- bination, never observed anywhere before. Hence, specialists soon began stressing the dangers of the new flu to humans, due to its high risk of contagion and unpredictable evolution. Accordingly, the WHO declared that Influenza A was an international public health emergency and announced a pandemic alert on April (which in July had already reached maximum levels, in a risk scale of 1–6; Portuguese National Board of Health-DGS, alerta@dgs.pt, 29 June 2009). The possibility of a pandemic and its consequences to the world population made this a priority matter to every country’s public health authorities. Given this possibility, the world media soon began to reproduce these concerns expressed by the WHO and the national states. According to the Gapminder Foundation (http://www.gapminder.org/videos/ swine-flu-alert-news-death-ratio-tuberculosis/), from April to May 2009 it was already possible to count on Google more than 250 000 news on Influenza A. In Portugal, the media also followed the disease’s evolution intensively. Reports of the Portuguese news coverage (Marketest, in http://www.marktest. com) point out that from 24 to 28 April 2009 the national televisions broadcasted 130 news related to Influenza A, filling 14% of the TV information. In the end of 2009, the numbers had already reached 1897 TV news. This level of newsworthiness is uncommon in health journalism and somehow expresses the high informative value given to this matter by national media. However, this degree of importance soon began being questioned by opinion makers, given that the worst predictions about the epidemic ended up failing to meet expectations throughout 2009. In July, the Portuguese National Board of Health (DGS) reported that the pandemic could 19 © W.S. Maney & Son Ltd 2012 DOI: 10.1179/2047971911Y.0000000001 International Journal of Healthcare Management 2012 VOL. 5 NO. 1