Who Is Responsible For Doctor-Patient Conflict?A Study On Responsibility Attribution For Chinese Doctor-Patient Conflict News Coverage(2000-2019)

As a serious public problem,doctor-patient conflict often becomes the focus of media attention.How the news media report doctor-patient conflict is also a topic that scholars discussed.Starting from the perspective of media responsibility attribution,this study selected doctor-patient conflict reports from domestic newspapers from2000 to 2019 and conducted content analysis on 911 valid samples,aiming to answer the following four research questions: 1?When reporting doctor-patient conflicts,do Chinese print media make attribution of responsibility more to society than to individuals? 2?Are there differences in attribution of responsibility among different media? 3?Is there a diachronic change in term of media attribution of responsibility during the last 20 years? 4 ? What are the factors that influence the attribution of responsibility in media doctor-patient conflict reports and how should the media report doctor-patient conflicts reasonably?The research findings are as followed: First of all,there is no imbalance in causal attribution in media reports.The causes of doctor-patient conflicts are evenly attributed to individuals and to social reasons.However,more news stories are likely to attribute to social problems for the responsibility of the conflicts.Secondly,by comparing party newspapers with commercial metropolitan newspapers,findings suggest that metropolitan newspapers are more inclined to propose solutions to problems from the social level,which indicates the influence of the cultural values of collectivism outweigh the organizational pressures.Thirdly,over the past 20 years,media reports have tended to less attribute doctor-patient conflicts to individual level.Through this textual analysis,we can see the attribution of responsibility of the media will potentially affected by the source and narrative framework.Thematic framework application shows that increasing media coverage will attempt to guide the audience to think about the doctor-patient conflict is caused by social problems.In contrast,episodic frame detail case doctor-patient conflicts tend to attributed the problem to the individual,this approach will intensify in the doctor-patient contradiction and create liability attribution bias easily.On the basis of summarizing the research conclusions,this study furtherdiscusses how the media can reasonably report the doctor-patient conflict,and proposes the following reporting approaches to reduce the attribution error.First,the report should be in-depth and comprehensive and the reporter had better come up with a targeted plan.Second,stick to media-based so that can reduce news bias,and journalist should avoid single attribution;Third,enhance the professionalism of journalists and correctly guide public opinion.