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This paper discusses the results of a study which analyzed the images of overweight and obese individuals in Time and Newsweek magazine coverage over a 25-year period (1984-2009), comparing the depictions with the actual national prevalence of obesity within key populations of interest during the same period. Researchers found that over one-third of depicted individuals were children, few (3.5%) were elderly, most (70%) were white, and they were about equally divided by gender. Over the 25-year period, there was an increased representation of non-whites among the depictions. Even with the increasing representation of non-whites over time, news media still underrepresented African Americans and Latinos. The elderly were also significantly underrepresented in news magazine images when compared to actual obesity prevalence rates.
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March 2015
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