The New Incinerator in Parma and the News from Newspapers - The Importance of Communication in Terms of "Environment and Health"

Objective is the evaluating of news concerning the incinerator in Parma and assessing any potential information gap, which could be addressed by institutional communication. Articles from both online and printed newspapers were selected, then underwent to double-blind review and were further evaluated also by a non-partisan expert. 2,390 articles were found through 'Google News' (incinerator, waste-to-energy plant, Parma); 96 of these were selected according to the relevance of the theme, then they were categorized as 'informative', 'scientific', 'political', 'socio-political' and 'economic' by all three evaluators. Such classification was finally contextualized depending on the type of newspaper. The agreement was considered using Cohen's kappa statistic. Within the 96 articles, 3 were economic, 34 political, 29 socio-political, 28 informational and only 2 scientific. The articles were further categorized by type of newspaper: 1% economic, 1% political, 5.2% environmentalist, 15.6% self-defined independent, 35.4% national and 41.7% local newspapers. This review shows that both local and national press are interested in the topic at issue, nevertheless it reveals a lack of scientific information. This analysis has not found articles in which the institutions directly involved have been consulted. Thus it would be desirable to have a greater mutual cooperation between the press and such institutions.