Giant new database of Australian TV Health News

The Australian Health News Research Collaboration (AHNRC) was launched in 2005 as an association of researchers from the School of Public Health and the Department of Media and Communications at University of Sydney who were interested investigating in the ways in which health and medical issues were covered in the news and infotainment media.

A 3 year competitive grant received from the Cancer Council NSW (2006-08) saw the consolidation of a digital collection (xlsx) of all health and medical news, current affairs and infotainment items broadcast on the 5 free-to-air Sydney TV channels. The grant saw a program of research resulting in 11 research papers and the growth of the TV database.

The Sydney TV database (xlsx) today has over 23,000 digital items, growing at about 120/week. Bona fide researchers can access the database by applying. A set of frequently asked questions about both browsing the database and viewing the video clips is here. You can go directly to the video collection here (first time users will need to register first and have this approved – typically within the hour on weekdays).