Vol.7(3), pp.

41-48, March 2015

DOI: 10.5897/JMCS2014.0423
Article Number: 6DC71BB50705 Journal of Media and Communication
ISSN 2141 -2189
Copyright © 2015 Studies
Author(s) retain the copyright of this article
http://www.academicjournlas.org/JMCS

Full Length Research Paper

Celebrity and health promotion: How media can play an

active role in cancer prevention and early detection
Priscila Biancovilli, Gabriel de Oliveira Cardoso Machado and Claudia Jurberg*
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Received 11 November, 2014; Accepted 9 February, 2015

It is well-known that celebrities can influence the mass public, helping to shape behaviours and
attitudes. The goal of this research is to understand the impact of a celebrity’s cancer news on Brazilian
society. Our hypothesis is that news about celebrities with cancer attracts much public attention, but
the media squander the chance to educate, inform and enlighten the public about this disease. We
studied the news published in online newspapers about the Brazilian actor Reynaldo Gianecchini, who
was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2011. We selected news published during specific periods – those
during which there was a surge in searches on Google, according to Google Trends tool. This study
shows that the public is interested in seeking information about cancer when a celebrity is diagnosed
with the disease. Although the public has shown interest in knowing more about the disease, the media
gave greater focus on celebrity itself. Journalists provide content with a more emotional and dramatic
bias – especially when it comes to celebrities.

Key words: Cancer, media, social media, twitter, celebrities.

INTRODUCTION

A public person is promoted from the status of ‘ordinary ple, ‘organized health promotion has long understood that
person’ to ‘celebrity’ from the time when the media starts by engaging a celebrity with a health issue … coverage
not only to show interest in his or her professional of the issue de jour can be increased to levels that would
accomplishments, but also to investigate the individual’s otherwise require stratospheric campaign budgets’
private life (Turner, 2004). The American historian Daniel (Chapman and Leask, 2001; Chapman and Lupton,
Boorstin originated one of the most famous aphorisms on 1994).
the subject: ‘The celebrity is a person who is well-known Likewise, when celebrities become ill or die, they are
for his well-knownness’ (Boorstin, 1961). able to generate massive nationwide or even worldwide
More than just entertaining the masses, celebrities can mobilization. Some remarkable cases include basketball
influence masses, helping to shape certain behaviours player ‘Magic’ Johnson’s contraction of HIV (Kalichman
and attitudes (Mashable, 2006; Turner, 2004). For exam- and Hunter, 1992), musician Kurt Cobain’s suicide

*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected].

Author agree that this article remain permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License 4.0 International License
42 J. Media Commun. Stud.

(Martin and Koo, 1997), Michael Jackson’s death (2009), when studying Brazilian media framing approach
(Sanderson and Cheong, 2010) after the indiscriminate concerning stem cells, state that “Brazilian media
use of prescription drugs, former US President Ronald analyzed […] presented evidence for and against
Reagan’s colorectal cancer (Martin and Potosky, 1990), research with stem cells, but it was biased in the
and Australian singer Kylie Minogue’s breast cancer. In selection of letters for publication and in the choice of
the last case, news coverage of Kylie Minogue's breast scenes included in newscasts".
cancer diagnosis caused an unprecedented increase in
mammography bookings in Australia (Chapman et al.,
2005); and more recently, in 2013, the case of Angelina METHODOLOGY
Jolie, a worldwide famous actress, which published a
News selection criteria
letter on The New York Times detailing what she called
“My Medical Choice”. She explained that she inherited a The sample period ranges from August 2011, when the disease of
faulty BRCA gene and decided therefore to undergo a Gianecchini was first diagnosed, to March 2012, when it was
double mastectomy. announced in the news that his cancer was in remission.
In general, it is observed that these episodes direct the We selected news published during specific periods – those
media coverage of related health and medical issues, during which there was a surge in searches on Google, the most
accessible search engine in Western countries (Haucap and
raising awareness and encouraging public debate on the Heimeshoff, 2013). To this purpose, we used the Google Trends
subject matter (Levy et al., 2012; Martin and Potosky, tool, which shows – within a specific time period– the search
1990; Metcalfe et al., 2010; Sanderson and Cheong, frequency of particular terms. This tool does not provide absolute
2010). numbers, but it builds a graph showing relative measures of
In August 2011, Brazilian soap opera’s actor Reynaldo Internet activity. According to Segev and Baram-Tsabari:
Gianecchini was diagnosed with lymphoma, a type of
Google Trends (GT) (www.google.com/trends) first became
blood cancer; the revelation of his illness caused great available to the public in May 2006 to assist research on searches
national concern (Nascimento et al., 2012). Throughout in Google Search and news articles collected in Google News. GT
August, all Brazilian media covered the actor’s illness analyzes and displays the proportion of searches for terms
extensively. It is important to emphasize that television is compared to the total number of searches made on Google over a
the dominant means of communication in the country. defined period of time (between 2004 and the present). GT also
shows how frequently topics have appeared in Google News stories
According to Brazilian Media Research (2015), 95% of and in which geographic regions people have searched for them
the Brazilians watch TV regularly and 74% watch TV the most. (Segev and Baram-Tsabari, 2010)
programs every day. “In Brazil, soap operas – broadcast On Google Trends, we searched for the terms ‘Gianecchini’ and
firstly in radio and later in TV – became one of the most ‘linfoma’ (‘lymphoma’ in English). During the period of data
popular TV programs, reaching huge audiences, collection, there were four points of sudden increase in searches for
sometimes overcoming the index of 50% of the whole the first term, and two for the latter. Each point represents a period
of one week. We started from the assumption that these points
population” (Massarani and Moreira, 2002). It is common resulted from times when the media had published news about the
that soap opera’s actors, such as Gianecchini, become actor that had caught the public’s attention and consequently, more
national idols. people had searched for these terms on Google. We restricted our
Considering this phenomenon, our hypothesis is that analysis to the news published in these peak periods.
news about celebrities with cancer attracts much public
attention, but the media squander the chance to educate,
Analysis of the social network Twitter
inform and enlighten the public about this disease,
because they instead focus on glamorizing the personal In addition, we decided to only look at news that reached a
life of the individual. minimum level of popularity on the social network Twitter. Twitter is
To investigate our hypothesis, we have employed the a microblogging platform whose main goal is to let people know
theory of media framing (Goffman, 1974; Tuchman, 1978; what is happening ‘right now’. In rankings by country, Brazil has the
fifth-highest number of active users in this social network (Statista,
Gitlin, 1980; Entman, 1989, 1993, 2004; Reese, 2001; 2014). Moreover, Portuguese is the fifth most spoken language on
Crawley, 2007) to analyse the most popular news on this platform (Mashable, 2006).Twitter allows users to share
Gianecchini's case, seeking common aspects among messages of up to 140 characters, which their followers can read
them. ‘Framing’ suggests that news media are not immediately. The profile displays a user's posts – or 'tweets' – in
impartial, as they make certain public issues more chronological order, with the latest additions appearing at the top of
noticeable than others, while also providing a specific the profile. Users can follow one another's content without recipro-
cal obligation (Marwick and Boyd, 2011). Twitter is used extensively
news angle that characterizes those events (Crawley, by major newspapers and magazines as a complementary way to
2007). Frames call attention to some aspects of reality publish news. In general, this takes the form of short news
while obscuring other elements, which might influence headlines followed by a hyperlink that directs the reader to the
audiences’ reactions (Entman, 1993). Jurberg et al. corresponding newspaper or magazine’s website, where the full
 Biancovilli et al. 43

story is available. First surge in searches – ‘Gianecchini’ and ‘linfoma’

As Twitter’s search engine is very limited, as one can only search
back in a period of one week, we used a tool called Topsy
(www.topsy.com), which shows the ‘tweets’ (messages on Twitter)
The first peak occurred in the period of 6–12 August
published over a period of time defined by the user. It also shows 2011. On 10 August, the actor was officially diagnosed
the number of shares that a ‘tweet’ has achieved to date. with lymphoma. In this period, 777 news stories were
Most of the Brazilian newspapers have Twitter accounts. Twitter found on the subject, 55 of which reached more than 30
users have the possibility to ‘retweet’ – that is, to share through shares on Twitter. The highlights of the period are stories
their own Twitter account news, which they have read and judged that reveal the diagnosis and the support of friends and
interesting. We decided to analyze news items that had achieved a
minimum of 30 shares. This number seemed practical for three
family, and especially the dissemination of a statement in
reasons: first, because it would be enough to give us an overview of which he claims to be ‘ready for the fight’. This quote,
what was published about the actor in a specific period; second, which became a catchphrase of the period, appears in 32
because it would limit the amount of stories to be analyzed and of the 55 news stories analysed.
makes the study plausible, since the amount of news found by In considering this sample, we discovered that three
Topsy on the topic was very large – approximately 10,000 news news stories offered infographics explaining the nature of
stories were published during the selected period; third, and finally,
because the most shared news stories were precisely those which lymphoma and its symptoms; 11 stories explained the
had greater visibility on Twitter, thus the stories themselves became disease (including the three in this group with
more relevant to our investigation. infographics) and nine of them quoted specialists or
Two researchers studied the news for the selected period. An physicians in general. In this period, 35 news stories
observation guide was created to support the researchers’ analysis featured some metaphor related to cancer: 32
of the news content. The criteria were established after all news
had been read, and our subsequent aim was to categorize the
reproduced the catchphrase ‘I'm ready for the fight’; one
news stories published on Gianecchini’s illness. We set up a table said ‘Gianecchini’s father also fights against cancer’;
containing the following columns: Number of retweets; Title of the another said that the actor was ‘ready to fight against
news; Newspaper; Section; Have infographic? What are the topics cancer’ and another pointed out that friends had ‘posted
covered? Quote experts? Explain the disease? Have metaphor? encouraging messages to support his combat against the
Regarding the items, we included the “Have infographic?” column disease’. That is, the 35 metaphors refer to the fight
because “the main advantage of infographics is to transmit a large
volume of information in very little space and time, communicating
against the disease.
in seconds what a text would take minutes” (Tabakman, 2013). For
this reason, infographics are a powerful tool to transmit health
information to readers. Second surge in searches – ‘Linfoma’
Columns “Quote experts?” and “Explain the disease?” were
included so we can investigate if news stories seek to explain the The second surge in searches for lymphoma, in the
disease in a more scientific way, in contrast to news reports that period 11–17 September 2011, does not relate directly to
only address the personal aspect of celebrities.
We decided to include “Have metaphor” column because using
Gianecchini. On 11 September, the Australian actor Andy
words such as war, fight and battle when talking or writing about Whitfield, who played one of the protagonists of the
cancer is recurrent (Sontag, 1978), and this can have negative series ‘Spartacus’, died from lymphoma.
consequences. “When people think of cancer as an enemy, this
may hurt the intention to engage in preventive behaviors that are
less associated with fighting enemies” (Hauser and Schwarz, 2015). Second surge in searches – ‘Gianecchini’
Note: when a news story does not provide clarification of what
lymphoma is in the body text but includes hyperlinks that redirect The second surge occurred over 17–23 September 2011.
the reader to other pages containing explanations, we consider that
it explains the disease. It is noteworthy that this was when the actor had
These results were duly compiled, and formed the basis for the appeared in public with a shaved head for the first time.
investigation of the news content selected for our study. Moreover, some newspapers highlighted the spiritual
surgery Gianecchini was about to undergo. A spiritual
surgery is a complementary/alternative therapeutic
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION method carried out by mediums. The technique consists
of touching the patient with hands and transferring
The graph produced by Google Trends shows time spiritual fluids to him. The efficiency of this method has
periods during which there is a sudden rise in searches not been scientifically proven. The use of
for the terms ‘Gianecchini’ and ‘linfoma’. These searches complementary/alternative medicine is common in Brazil.
were conducted in Brazilian Portuguese (Figure 1). Samano et al. (2004) studied this use among a group of
News items included in Table 1 were those that had Brazilian cancer patients and Almeida et al. (2000) tried
achieved more than 30 shares on Twitter. These periods to verify the veracity of spiritual surgery. In this period, 80
are those of sudden increase in searches for the terms pieces of news were found, 11 of which had 30 or more
‘lymphoma’ and ‘Gianecchini’ on Google. shares on Twitter.
44 J. Media Commun. Stud.

Figure 1. Google Trends graph showing surges on searches for the terms ‘Gianecchini’ (in blue) and ‘linfoma’ (in red).
Source: http://www.google.com.br/trends/ .

None of these news stories contained infographics; two he declared he had ‘a very rare and complicated cancer’.
quoted experts; two explained the disease and seven The interview was entirely recorded on video and posted
included metaphors on cancer, all of them including the on the website YouTube, causing great commotion
word ‘fight’. because he cries several times (numerous copies of this
The two stories that explain the disease have the video are available on YouTube, the most popular of
following titles: ‘Cover of magazine “Veja” shows which has about 80,000 views). Of the 27 stories, three
Gianecchini bald’, from the Internet “Portal Terra” (often discussed this interview.
accessed by those seeking information on celebrities), Another highlight of the period related to rumors that
and ‘Magazine shows Reynaldo Gianecchini’s head Gianecchini had once again been hospitalized. In fact,
shaved’. Importantly, the weekly magazine “Veja” has the such news was released by a fake Twitter profile of the
largest national circulation in Brazil. In both cases, the actor, and was immediately contradicted by his press
explanation of lymphoma is not contained within the body office. Three of the news stories from this period refer to
of the text but in a hyperlink that redirects the reader to this fact.
another page on the same site, where it is possible to find
more detailed information about the nature of lymphoma
and how it is treated. Fourth surge in searches - ‘Gianecchini’

The fourth period is the week between 20 and 26

Third surge in searches – ‘Gianecchini’ November, 2011. Of 187 news items including the term
‘Gianecchini’, seven were shared 30 or more times on
The third stage refers to the period from 16 to 22 October Twitter. Of these, one included an infographic and
2011. From the 323 news items found, 27 had more than explained the disease but did not speak to a specialist.
30 shares on Twitter. Of these, only one included an Five metaphors related to cancer, all of them citing the
infographic; another one quoted a specialist; five word ‘fight’. One of the stories repeats the term three
explained the disease (three of them very briefly) and 16 times.
used metaphors, 14 of them with the word ‘fight’, one with The surge in Google searches is explained by the fact
the words ‘fight’ and ‘battle’ and one with the term ‘battle’. that Gianecchini had given an interview to the TV
This surge occurred in the week in which the actor's programme “Fantástico”, on Globo Television Network;
father, also named Reynaldo Gianecchini, died of liver this has the largest audience on Brazilian television on a
and pancreatic cancer. However, not all selected news Sunday. In a long conversation, the actor recounted his
refers to his death. During this period, the actor gave an entire career from the onset of symptoms until the cancer
interview to the Brazilian Association of Lymphoma and chemotherapy, passing through the death of his father
Leukemia, his first interview since the diagnosis, in which and the unconditional support he received from relatives,
 Biancovilli et al. 45

Table 1. Characteristics of surges in searches.

News with Explain Have

Have Quote
Period What happened more than 30 the metaphor
infographic experts
retweets disease on cancer

1st surge 6-12 The actor was

‘Gianecchini’ August diagnosed with 55 3 11 35 9
+ ‘linfoma’ 2011 cancer

The actor had

2nd surge 17-23
appeared in public
September 11 0 2 7 2
‘Gianecchini’ with a shaved head
2011
for the first time

The actor's father,

rd
3 surge also named
16-22
Reynaldo
‘Gianecchini’ October 27 1 5 16 1
Gianecchini, died of
2011
liver and pancreatic
cancer.

The actor gave a

long interview to a
4th surge 20-26
TV show, in which
November 7 1 1 5 0
‘Gianecchini’ he spoke about his
2011
life after the
disease.

friends and even strangers. power to shape habits and health behaviour among the
general public. According to Hoffman and Tan (2013), the
influence of a celebrity’s status is a deeply rooted
Google Trends and interests of the audience process that can be harnessed for good or abused for
harm, especially with regard to health issues.
Analysis of the graph produced by Google Trends shows Considering the most popular news on Twitter about
that the public interest in Gianecchini’s lymphoma tended Reynaldo Gianecchini’s lymphoma, in the week of the
to decrease over subsequent months. This is probably diagnosis, we found that 11 of the 55 studied news items
because the actor's health condition had steadily provided explanations of the disease, and nine quoted
improved over the months, showing no relapse. experts, which shows that media framing in that week did
The first surge in searches for the term lymphoma (6– not have a prominent scientific and informative bias.
12 August 2011) showed that the public wanted more Furthermore, none of the articles, even those that explain
information on the disease, not only on the celebrity. The the disease, cover the topic of cancer prevention. Some
point of a celebrity’s cancer diagnosis is, therefore, the measures can be taken to decrease the possibility of
best moment to clarify details of the disease, showing being affected by certain types of cancer. Diets rich in
how to prevent it, what the symptoms are and how the fruits and vegetables, for example, may have a protective
treatment works, among other things. Celebrity cancer effect against non-Hodgkin lymphomas. Exposure to
cases generate extreme public awareness of the disease; certain chemicals, including pesticides, solvents,
at this time more than any other, the media has great fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides, are related to the
46 J. Media Commun. Stud.

development of lymphomas (Instituto Nacional do on the cover of the magazine “Veja”, which is the most
Câncer, 2013). popular magazine in Brazil. The third surge of searches
Some studies show that the media could contribute occurred for various reasons, but the interview with the
greatly to disseminating preventive behaviours (Goffman, actor, which was widely publicized on social networks,
1974; Kalichman and Hunter, 1992; Martin and Potosky, drew widespread public attention. These events show
1990; Chapman and Leask, 2001; Chapman et al., 2005; that Gianecchini’s case continued to stigmatize the
Metcalfe et al., 2010; Bhatti and Redelmeier, 2014). negative aspects of cancer, such as physical changes
Theories of health information acquisition consider (hair loss) and distress (he cried a lot in his first
information-seeking to be an important mediator between interview). Also, the disclosure of the Gianecchini’s
a stimulating event and a subsequent initiation or change spiritual surgery achieved prominence in the media. A
in behaviour (Griffin et al., 1999; Niederdeppe et al., spiritual surgery is a complementary/alternative therapeu-
2008). According to Bhatti and Redelmeier (2014), the tic method carried out by mediums (De Almeida et al.,
case of Angelina Jolie: 2000). This reveals strong potential for sensationalism in
coverage of such methods. Accordingly, none of the
“…there was a large temporary surge in queries about news discussing this spiritual surgery told the story in a
genetics and treatment, a modest increase in queries skeptical way, or explained that it was not the correct
about general information and risk assessment, and a medical procedure of treating lymphoma. In short, this
rapid return to baseline after about one week. The news does a disservice to the population, because it
implication is that Angelina Jolie spurred significant opens up the dangerous possibility that some might be
information-seeking about breast cancer genetic testing encouraged to think that spiritual surgery could suffice for
for a short time.” (Bhatti and Redelmeier, 2014) medical procedures.
Another highlight is the large number of metaphors
Moreover, when the Australian singer Kylie Minogue was found in all periods analyzed – from the 100 news items
diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, at the age of 36, studied in total, 60 used metaphors, especially those
the media in her country covered the event massively, containing the terms ‘struggle’ and ‘battle’. Until now, no
generating in the process a ‘Kylie effect’ (Chapman et al., Brazilian study set out to investigate the war metaphors
2005): a 40% increase in the amount of appointments for in discourse about cancer. Studies on cancer by Sontag
mammograms in the two weeks after the diagnosis was (1978), Clarke and Robinson (1999), Grant and Hundley
made public, plus a 101% increase in mammograms for (2009), Seale (2001a, 2001b), Hauser and Schwarz
previously unscreened women in the eligible age group of (2015) came to important conclusions. When relating
40–69 years. This effect was boosted by the way in which cancer to war metaphors and imagery, for example, ‘fight
the media presented the theme: Minogue was repeatedly against the enemy’, and ‘battle to be won’, media tends to
reported to have a good prognosis because the cancer strengthen an extremely negative stereotype of the
had been detected early, which boded well for her disease. According to Sontag (1978), cancer is
recovery and survival (28%). The importance of early spectacularly overloaded with trap metaphors, and this
detection was often stressed in news stories (8%), and has cost many lives in the past. Many years after the
26% of news items gave a more general prevention Sontag studies, we still note that cancer is referred to by
message. Journalists emphasized explicitly that vigilance media as a sort of punishment (Verjovsky and Jurberg,
and mammograms were relevant for all women 2012), instead of a relatively common disease that can
(Chapman et al., 2005). affect anyone. Moreover, according to Hauser and
A similar approach, focusing mainly on lymphoma, Schwarz (2015), Framing cancer in terms of bellicose
appeared prominently in the period in which Gianecchini enemy metaphors has unintended side-effects that may
was diagnosed with the disease, then faded with the impair efficient prevention strategies. Many behaviors
passage of time. Infographics appeared three times that reduce the risk of cancer require one to limit
among 55 news items in the first period: once in the third enjoyable activities, from sunbathing to drinking alcohol
period (among 27 stories) and once in the fourth period and eating red meats. Yet, limiting and constraining
(among seven stories). This tool should be used with oneself is not a concept closely associated with fighting
more emphasis by health journalists in order to hold enemies. Hence, a bellicose message frame that empha-
readers’ attention once it has been captivated by the sizes fighting an enemy may render these protective
subject (Tabakman, 2013). Another point of interest we behaviors less compelling than they might otherwise be.
consider is the investigation of one aspect of the second Although the use of war metaphors when writing and
period studied (between 17 and 23 September 2011), talking about cancer is quite common, it is important that
when Gianecchini had appeared in public with a shaved journalists acquire a greater awareness of the negative
head for the first time. It is noteworthy that his photo was consequences that the use of this figure of speech can
 Biancovilli et al. 47

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