DOI: 10.5061/dryad.83004
title: Data from: Newspaper coverage of maternal health in Bangladesh, Rwanda, and South Africa: a quantitative and qualitative content analysis

description: Objective: To examine newspaper coverage of maternal health in three
 countries that have made varying progress towards Millennium Development
 Goal 5 (MDG 5): Bangladesh (on track), Rwanda (making progress, but not on
 track) and South Africa (no progress). Design: We analysed each
 country's leading national English-language newspaper:
 Bangladesh's The Daily Star, Rwanda's The New Times/The Sunday
 Times, and South Africa's Sunday Times/The Times. We quantified the
 number of maternal health articles published from 1 January 2008 to 31
 March 2013. We conducted a content analysis of subset of 190 articles
 published from 1 October 2010 to 31 March 2013. Results: Bangladesh's
 The Daily Star published 579 articles related to maternal health from 1
 January 2008 to 31 March 2013, compared to 342 in Rwanda's The New
 Times/The Sunday Times and 253 in South Africa's Sunday Times/The
 Times over the same time period. The Daily Star had the highest proportion
 of stories advocating for or raising awareness of maternal health. Most
 maternal health articles in The Daily Star (83%) and The New Times/The
 Sunday Times (69%) used a ‘human-rights’ or ‘policy-based’ frame compared
 to 41% of articles from Sunday Times/The Times. Conclusions: In the three
 countries included in this study, which are on different trajectories
 towards MDG 5, there were differences in the frequency, tone and content
 of their newspaper coverage of maternal health. However, no causal
 conclusions can be drawn about this association between progress on MDG 5
 and the amount and type of media coverage of maternal health.
description: Total articles published
 for Bangladesh Rwanda and South AfricaWe analyzed each
 country’s leading national English-language newspaper: Bangladesh's
 The Daily Star, Rwanda's The New Times/The Sunday Times, and South
 Africa's Sunday Times/The Times. We searched the electronic archives
 of each country’s newspapers described above from January 1, 2008 to March
 31, 2013. We chose a January 1, 2008 start date because the searchable
 online archive of South Africa’s Sunday Times only goes as far back as
 January 1, 2008. We searched for articles on maternal health (including
 family planning) using the strategy detailed in Appendix A. The collected
 articles were entered on an Excel spreadsheet.Coded articles
 BangladeshFor the content
 analysis, we used a “constructed week” sampling technique, in which sample
 dates are stratified by day of the week to account for systematic
 variation due to day of the week. Through this “constructed week” sampling
 method, we sampled 75 articles from The Daily Star
 (Bangladesh).Coded articles
 RwandaFor the content
 analysis, we used a “constructed week” sampling technique, in which sample
 dates are stratified by day of the week to account for systematic
 variation due to day of the week. Through this “constructed week” sampling
 method, we sampled 64 articles from Rwanda’s The New Times/The Sunday
 Times .Coded articles South
 AfricaFor the content
 analysis, we used a “constructed week” sampling technique, in which sample
 dates are stratified by day of the week to account for systematic
 variation due to day of the week. Through this “constructed week” sampling
 method, we sampled 51 articles from South Africa’s Sunday Times/The
 Times.Sampled articles to
 codeFor the content
 analysis, we used a "constructed week" sampling technique, in
 which sample dates are stratified by day of the week to account for
 systematic variation due to day of the week. Through this “constructed
 week” sampling method, we sampled 75 articles from The Daily Star
 (Bangladesh), 64 articles from Rwanda’s The New Times/The Sunday Times and
 51 articles from South Africa’s Sunday Times/The Times— a total of 190
 articles published from October 1, 2010 to March 31,
 2013Inter-rater
 ReliabilityTwo coders (Frey Gugsa
 and Ellora Karmarkar) developed the codebook from relevant existing work,
 supplemented with additional themes that emerged from the three newspapers
 (Appendix B). We followed an iterative process of reading randomly
 selected articles, assessing themes, and adjusting the codebook until we
 achieved inter-rater reliability (Cohen’s Kappa &gt; 0.82). All articles
 were recoded using the finalized codebook.