Journalists’ vision of the evolution of the (metaphorical) ecosystem of communication on health and biomedicine

Abstract

This article analyses specialist journalists’ perception of transformations in public communication on health and biomedicine in Spain over the last two decades. A total of 20 semi-structured interviews were carried out. The analysis uses the metaphorical concept of “ecosystem”. According to the interviewees, the main “environmental” changes are technological (stressing the expansion and diversity of online information and the impact of social media). They perceive a multiplication and diversification among “information source-species”. Among these, the visibility of specialist sources (researchers and healthcare professionals) and civil associations (patients and consumers) has increased, but “opportunistic species”, such as promoters of fake news and pseudo-medicine, have also emerged. Health journalists rate their profession satisfactorily, while recognising that their working “environment” has deteriorated and perceiving a threat in the dependence on clickbait and social media positioning.