Dynamics of an Infectious Disease Where Media Coverage Influences Transmission

There is significant current interest in the application of media/psychosocial effects to problems inepidemiology. News reporting has the potential to reach and to modify the knowledge, attitudes, andbehavior of a large proportion of the community. A susceptible-infected-hospitalized-recoveredmodel with vital dynamics, where media coverage of disease incidence and disease prevalence caninfluence people to reduce their contact rates is formulated. The media function is incorporatedinto the model using an exponentially decreasing function. Qualitative analysis of the model revealsthat the disease-free equilibrium is locally asymptotically stable when a certain threshold is less than unity.Numerical results show the potential short-term beneficial effect of media coverage.