Television documentary in New Zealand and the construction of doctors by lower socio-economic groups

Developing a Critical Media Research Agenda for Health Psychology

This article outlines reasons why psychologists should concern themselves with media processes, noting how media are central to contemporary life and heavily implicated in the construction of shared understandings of health. We contend that the present research focus is substantially medicalized, privileging the investigation and framing of certain topics, such as the portrayal of health professionals, medical practices, specific diseases and lifestyle-orientated interventions, and restricting attention to social determinants of health as appropriate topics for investigation. We propose an extended agenda for media health research to include structural health concerns, such as crime, poverty, homelessness and housing and social capital.

Everyday health and the internet: a mediated health perspective on health information seeking

This paper explores the relationship between internet use and individuals' health experience. Adopting a 'mediated health' approach, it presents four cases studies of households using the internet for health information. The study shows that participants use the internet as it offers personalized information in line with individuals' and families' health needs affecting their everyday routines. The internet emerges as an everyday helper linked to the intimacy of health experiences. Agency is manifest in study participants' choice of both becoming more informed as well as having the possibility of ignoring information. Case studies also show how personal internet use is confronted by informational surroundings generating flows of information that may induce uncertainty on the information seeker's side. The paper calls for a perspective which considers together personal health experience and media use to embed online health information seeking within an everyday context of internet use.

'Hardcore drinking': portrayals of alcohol consumption in young women's and men's magazines

Young adults and young women in particular are drinking more alcohol than ever before, with implications for risky behaviours and long-term health. This study explored the ways in which alcohol and drinking were represented in six monthly UK magazines (three targeted at young men, three at young women) across a three-month period (18 magazines). We identified three main discourses across the texts, namely the drug alcohol; masculinity and machismo; and drinking as normality. These discourses constructed women's and men's drinks and drinking behaviours in sharp contrast. Drinking was aligned with traditional masculine images, although new kinds of drinks were aligned with traditional feminine images--and derided in men's magazines. Findings highlight how gender, constructed in relation to the other, is an important aspect of representations of drinking patterns in young adults.

Challenging the 'view from nowhere': citizen reflections on specialist expertise in a deliberative process

This paper presents analysis of citizen encounters with specialists in a deliberative process, called Deliberative Mapping, which explored options for addressing the shortage of organs for transplantation in the UK. There is a rich theoretical literature about the extent to which citizens are competent to question the knowledge claims of specialists in complex decision-making processes, suggesting the trustworthiness of scientific expertise will depend on the qualities of social interaction in face-to-face dialogue, but little empirical analysis of specific encounters. This paper presents evidence of how citizens located specialist expertise in making judgements about the legitimacy and credibility of specialist knowledge claims, in ways that reflect differences in epistemic procedures valued by the panels of men and women in this process.

Narrativity and the mediation of health reform agendas

Over the last two decades the repositioning of state-funded health systems and the increased use of private services have been the focus of extensive public debate. This paper explores the ways in which media coverage of healthcare reform is made sense of by lower socio-economic status (SES) audiences. We presented television documentaries to participants and analysed their accounts from focus group discussions following the viewing. We explore these discussions as shared social spaces within which participants work through the dilemmas posed by the reforms. In exploring reception as a storytelling process, we link audience and lay beliefs research and investigate how aspects of television coverage are appropriated by viewers to make sense of the causes and implications of healthcare reform.