The news media is the most common way for individuals to obtain information about a vast range of events. The purpose of the present study was to better understand what factors predict people's news media patterns, including mental health, personality factors, and propensity for altruism. This study investigated whether certain media patterns correlate with higher pathology in viewers. Participants were asked to complete an informal survey in which they provided information about their news patterns in general, and then specifically about their news media pattern when obtaining information about the Haitian crisis. The Haitian crisis served as an example of a crisis event broadcasted by a wide variety 9f news media outlets including local news, cable news, magazines, and internet sources. Additional measures in the study include the Symptom-Checklist-90 (SCL-90) self-report scale as a measure of psychopathology, the Civic Moral Disengagement Scale (CMDs), and the self-report Altruism Measure. It was predicted that participants who accessed news about the disaster through sources that presented a political agenda rather than just reporting the news, would score higher on psychopathology and lower Qn altruism. Although there was no significant correlation between news media patterns and psychopathology, a correlation between news media patterns and altruistic behavior was found. Personality factors were also significantly correlated to altruistic behavior and media choice. The findings of this study open the doors to further studies in the field of media, personality, and altruistic behavior. Implications of the findings, as well as need for further research are discussed.

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The main objective of this thesis is to describe agenda building process in Czech news media on the example of health news. The thesis is based on the concept of agenda-setting which operates with the term "media agenda". The fundamental question of media agenda building is how and why some topics get to the news while others not. Two separate pieces of research have been conducted for the purpose of this thesis. Firstly quantitative content analysis explores how selected Czech news media report on health news during 2013. The analysis is focused on daily press Mladá fronta Dnes, Lidové noviny, Hospodářské noviny, Právo, Česká televize TV news, and Český rozhlas radio news. Secondly, interviews with journalists who are or were devoted to the health news describe media routines forming media content. The result based on the two research methods is a description of health newsgathering. Particularly, the issues in question are how health journalists receive ideas for their stories, what motivates them, who forms health news, what role plays intermedia agenda, public relations materials or human stories.

Les médias et les réseaux sociaux constituent une source importante de diffusion et de communication des résultats de la recherche clinique. Le terme « spin » est utilisé lorsque la présentation et l’interprétation des résultats d’une étude sont déformées par les auteurs que ce soit intentionnellement ou involontairement. Les spins exagèrent les effets bénéfiques des interventions et sous-estiment les effets indésirables. Les principaux objectifs de ce travail étaient :1) d’évaluer la prévalence des « spins » dans les articles de presse, d’identifier les différentes stratégies de spin et de développer une classification de spin ; 2) d’identifier les facteurs associés à une diffusion des résultats via les réseaux sociaux et 3) d’étudier comment les articles scientifiques rapportés avec des spins diffusent via les réseaux sociaux, à partir de l’exemple de l’essai DAPT 2014. Dans un premier temps, nous avons réalisé une revue systématique des articles de presse décrivant les résultats d’études évaluant une intervention et indexés dans la rubrique santé de Google. Nous avons développé une classification des stratégies de spin pour les articles de presse et montré que la prévalence des spins est élevée. Dans un deuxième temps, nous avons réalisé une étude de cohorte d’articles évaluant les traitements contre le cancer pour identifier les facteurs associés à une attention médiatique élevée. Le critère de jugement principal était l’attention portée par les médias et les réseaux sociaux mesuré par le « score Altmetric ». Nos résultats ont montré l’importance de l’accès libre et des communiqués de presse. Enfin, nous avons effectué une analyse systématique de l’attention portée par les médias et les réseaux sociaux autour de l'étude DAPT qui était rapporté avec des spins sous estimant les effets indésirable de l’intervention. Nous avons montré que l’interprétation des résultats par les auteurs sont rarement contredits. Ces travaux ont permis de mettre en évidence l’importance des spins dans les médias et de développer des outils (classification de spin) pour améliorer la diffusion des résultats de la recherche. / Mass media and social networks are important sources of disseminating and communicating clinical research. The term “spin” is used when the presentation and interpretation of the results of a study is distorted by the authors intentionally or unintentionally. Spins exaggerate the beneficial effects of interventions and underestimate adverse effects. The main objectives of this PhD were (I) to assess the prevalence of spin in health news, as well as identify and classify different strategies of spin; (II) to identify factors associated with dissemination of research results through online media, and (III) to explore how results of a trial reported with spin were disseminated to the scientific community and online media, using the 2014 DAPT trial as a case study. For the first aim, we performed a cross-sectional study of health news and described the distortion of research results of studies evaluating an intervention in Google health news. We developed a classification of spin for health news and showed a high prevalence of spin. For the second aim, we performed a cohort study of articles evaluating cancer treatments and identify factors associated with high online media attention. The primary outcome was the attention received by media and social networks measured by Altmetric score. Our results highlighted the importance of open access and press releases. Finally, we performed a systematic review of attention received by media and social networks surrounding the DAPT study which were reported with spin and undermine the adverse effects of the treatment. We showed that the interpretation of results by authors was rarely criticized. These results highlighted the importance of spin in mass media and provided a tool (classification of spin) to improve the dissemination of research results.