Does the media contribute to raising awareness of organ donation? Evidence from Brazil

Purpose Brazil has the second-biggest transplant system in the world. The organ donation rates, however, are still low. To persuade the population towards the theme, media interventions are broadcast regularly. This article analyses how media intervention in the form of advertising campaigns, telenovelas, and news can raise the rates of organ donations in Brazil. Design/methodology/approach We obtained data from the Brazilian Association for Organ Transplantation (ABTO), the Brazilian Health Ministry (HM), the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE), Globoplay, and other media sources to build a panel with quarterly data from 2009 to 2019, by state. Then we used fixed-effect panel regression models with healthcare supply and demographics as control variables to ascertain the effect of the media variable on organ donations during this period. Findings The results indicate that media interventions can increase the number of effective organ donors by up to 1%. The coefficient of media interventions is significant and positive for telenovelas (95% C.I 0.156–0.164), and for news in the following quarter (95% C.I 0.108–0.232), not significant individually for contemporaneous news or government advertising campaigns. Social implications Telenovelas and news presentations are effective tools of awareness for organ donation. Empirically, media interventions in the form of telenovelas or news impact organ donation as much as improvements in the healthcare system and can diminish the mortality on the waiting list by 17%. Originality/value This is the first time that media coverage and organ donation campaigns are evaluated together using panel data analysis in Brazil. Peer review The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-03-2023-0221