Mindfulness Reporting is Not So Mindful
I think I did this to myself, yep
Hi there! This is TITLE-ABS-KEY(“science journalism“), a newsletter about science journalism research. In the previous issue, I looked into the coverage of marine issues and found I could really relate to journalists never ever having enough time and resources to cover this important topic.
So I got quite stressed reading and then thinking about the persistent survival mode many science reporters have to work in — and decided to unwind by reading a paper about the media covering meditation apps. I am writing this before I know whether this will truly help me calm down or quite the opposite; we’ll see.
Today’s paper: Walker, S. L., & Viaña, J. N. Mindful mindfulness reporting: Media portrayals of scientific evidence for meditation mobile apps. Public Understanding of Science (2023). DOI: 10.1177/09636625221147794.
Why this paper: I frankly don’t think journalists covering meditation apps and the wellness industry in general are that focused on the scientific evidence — but perhaps they should be in the interest of their audience, who are occasionally sold outrageous science-y gobbledygook.
Abstract: Promoting mental health is a major global challenge. As mindfulness meditation apps can help maintain and restore good mental health, it is important to understand how their efficacy and safety are portrayed in the media. This study systematically evaluates whether evidence from academic research is used to communicate the health effects of two popular mindfulness apps, Calm and Smiling Mind. A scoping review mapped research findings from 16 relevant articles, and a media analysis examined the types of evidence used in news reporting. Analysing 105 news articles revealed that 98% did not use evidence from academic research on app-based meditation to support health claims. Only 28.5% of articles included advice from a health expert, and 9.5% mentioned potential risks and alternative treatments. Stronger evidence-based reporting on the health effects of mindfulness apps is needed to enable people to make more informed decisions for their health and wellbeing.
Full disclosure: I do have a meditation app on my phone (neither Calm nor Smiling Mind) but you can tell I’ve been neglecting it by the fact that I tried to open it just now and found out it had been discontinued some time ago and no longer works. Oh well.
The introduction of the paper says all the right things: mental illness is a growing concern severely exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. And that same pandemic has brought increased attention to personal wellbeing tools and practices compatible with lockdowns — including mindfulness apps. Here’s the kicker paragraph:
There are also growing concerns about how mindfulness meditation contributes to the medicalisation and healthicisation of everyday life (Barker, 2014). The mindfulness movement represents an expansion of the concept of disease, portraying failure to pay attention as a disease cause and associating daily worries with a diseased state (Barker, 2014). As a result, mindfulness increases the scope of therapeutic intervention, opening the possibility that one is never healed and constantly needs healing through mindfulness practice (Barker, 2014). Monetising this ‘will to health’ (Rose, 2001) has led to a booming mindfulness industry, with the meditation apps market valued at USD1.1 billion in 2021 (Market Data Centre, 2022).
I’ve heard about medicalisation before but not healthicisation, apparently the notion that people perceive the maintenance or restoration of health as a responsibility of good citizenship. That, to me, feels like the benevolently packaged, socially acceptable and success- and personal productivity-focused side of bias and discrimination against people in poor health. It’s not that sick people are worthless and doing this to themselves, oh no, we would never say that. It’s that if you truly want to Make A Difference in the world and Achieve Your Goals, you simply cannot afford to feel these feelings and stress and anxiety and whatever. This was fun during a deadly pandemic and even more fun when the war broke out, yes.
The authors add: Neoliberal mindfulness is coupled with the trend of self-care, where the obligation for health maintenance rests with the individual (Doran, 2018). Good mental health is then a state that must be maintained through personal practice. This provides the impression that mindfulness practice by itself is adequate, fostering a ‘continued depoliticisation and undermining of the social effort’ (Crawford, 1980: 368) for health promotion.
The next section of the paper is titled Evidence-based journalism is critical, and somehow I am not hopeful. The authors go through the laundry list of bad trends in media and journalism that do not support evidence-based reporting, and one of them is reduction of specialist reporters to cut costs. While I concede that newsrooms have relied and will rely on specialists to bug everyone else about the coverage of their specialist topic, I feel like most of the concerns we have with media portrayals of health science do not really require a science and health reporter advocate to identify and address them. The fruit are often so low hanging there they are literally on the ground.
The authors pick two prominent and popular mindfulness apps, Calm and Smiling Mind, do a scoping review and media analysis on both — and then look at how what we know about their health effects, efficacy and safety from research rhymes with what the English-language media stories present.
For the scoping review, the authors ended up with 16 articles, ten (!) of which were RCTs, randomized control trials; to be honest, I had no idea there were so many RCTs for mindfulness apps. But before I could really get excited about this evidence base — most of these were not really diverse in terms of settings and participants, and there was no clear signal for the most common health concern studied, i.e. sleep disturbance. Moreover, these studies also led the authors to conclude that app-based meditation may not be suitable for those experiencing more severe mental health issues. I mean, I did not really expect apps to replace medication and therapy but, to me, this is typical wellness industry: for most people it can help, the core effect is rightfully placebo.
Obviously all of this should be mentioned in journalistic stories about these apps; the authors found 105 articles mentioning Calm or Smiling Mind and a health-related claim, with 99 of those about Calm. Apparently Calm is focused at least in part on the quality of sleep and has made it a feature of their marketing and PR efforts, so sleep was also the most news-reported health issue.
For the content analysis, the paper identifies four types of evidence to support health-related claims, and then looks at how the articles perform:
Unsupported statements with no reference to any form of evidence (weakest): 38% of all articles had these;
personal experiences of the author, interviewees, or celebrities and athletes: 32.3% had these, and 41.9% included references to celebrities, overwhelmingly for Calm where it is, again, part of their marketing strategy;
medical advice from an identified health professional, who could be the author, an interviewee or a quote contributor: 28.5% had these;
scientific research findings (strongest): six stories mentioned scientific research on meditation, and only two referred specifically to app-based studies. One story did everything right, according to the authors.
Well, that kind of makes me want to launch a mindfulness app and contemplate the sorry state of journalism.
From the analysis of news articles, several themes with implications for evidence-based health news reporting have been identified. These include a significant underuse of evidence to support health claims, the prevalent use of celebrities and athletes as a narrative device, the deficit of information on potential risks and alternative treatments, and the need to acknowledge structural drivers of mental health issues.
The researchers refrain from saying the quiet part out loud: all these “themes” above are marketing and not journalism, plain and simple. And I wonder how much this structural failure has to do with disdain for ‘soft news,’ ‘silly‘ topics and yes, women’s issues in favour of ‘real’ reporting.
I did not think I could get more upset until I read the the recommendations part of the paper. To encourage greater uptake of academic research in mass media, there should be an increased investment in the following strategies. First, media organisations should invest more in science journalism. Inadequate resourcing erodes journalistic quality and public trust in the media (Fink, 2019). In a time when journalism is under threat, valuing evidence-based reporting is more important than ever. Second, there needs to be stricter adherence to journalism guidelines. There are numerous journalistic standards of practice promoting evidence-based, balanced and transparent reporting (Australian Press Council, 2014; Society of Professional Journalists, 2014). Journalists should be incentivised to meet these standards through organisational cultures and policies. Third, researchers should be supported by their institutions to take proactive steps to publicise their work, including pitching stories to media outlets, being available to journalists for comment, and engaging with the public through social media and public events. Finally, app companies should promote research on mindfulness apps and lead the way in disseminating findings of these studies to the public, including any adverse effects from app use.
Right, so we’re looking for more investment in science journalism and stricter adherence to journalism guidelines (I hope to at least be alive if not still working when this time comes) and better scicomm from researchers (possibly? but given #1 and #2 I’m not holding my breath).
The final point about app companies promoting research evidence is so naive it’s actually quite sweet, betraying a fundamental misunderstanding of corporate marketing. Of course it’s great when we can use RCTs to support our health claims, but what if, and hear me out, we talk about Matthew McConaughey and Shawn Mendes instead? With their photos too?
Yeah, I think you can tell I did not exactly calm down.
That’s it! If you enjoyed this issue, let me know. If you also have opinions or would like to suggest a paper for me to read in one of the next issues, you can leave a comment or just respond to the email.
Cheers! 👩🔬