Utilising Media and Text-Based Sources

An often-underestimated, valuable source of naturally occurring data is that of media sources, such as television programmes, documentaries, newspapers, and magazines. Often in traditional textbooks these are positioned as secondary sources. We argue that they can be considered primary data, as well as naturally occurring data. This type of naturally occurring data is of interest for qualitative research, and in this chapter, we focus on the use of policy documents, medical notes, health guidelines, as well as other data sources such as police transcripts, court transcripts, and social care reports whereby health is invoked, to illustrate the value of analysing texts that occur naturally in the field of health.

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.

Mediation and the Construction of Contemporary Understandings of Health and Lifestyle

The practice of using media to promote the benefits of diet and exercise has been associated with the rise in prominence of a sense of personal obligation for one’s own health. This article contributes to recent critiques of the emphasis being placed on individual responsibility for health. We argue that if health psychologists are to develop an adequately social understanding of our role in promoting health, then we must begin to examine the influence of our practices and agendas on public understandings. Extracts from research accounts are used to illustrate the pervasiveness of media health messages in everyday life and the prominence of a sense of individual responsibility.

Narratives of Obesity as Presented in the Context of a Television Talk Show

Media representations of health and illness have come under scrutiny for their ability to mislead and misinform the public about health issues. However, the media also provide a public forum in which talk about health and illness may be circulated in a more positive fashion. This article consists of a narrative analysis of an episode of the BBC talk show Kilroy, in which the topic of obesity is discussed by the show’s host and a group of lay guests. Two narratives in particular are examined for their similarities and differences. Both are structured around the idea of a ‘turning point’ that results in successful recovery from obesity, although what constitutes recovery differs in both cases, and is linked to the overall structure of the narrative. It is argued that personal narratives are important conceptual tools for health psychologists to work with, although we cannot lose sight of the mediated context in which these data are produced.

The Social Negotiation of People’s Views on the Causes of Illness

Over the last two decades increasing attention has been given to lay views of health and illness. An important area within this research is the views that different socioeconomic groups hold on the causes of illness. Generally it is concluded that people of lower socioeconomic status are more likely than those of more affluent standing to talk about the causes of illness in lifestyle rather than structural terms that involve overt connections with the material impact of social inequality. We draw on 20 semi-structured interviews with New Zealanders of lower socioeconomic status to explore the ways various causes are assigned to illness. Our participants voice multiple and often contradictory views when assigning cause, and include references to structural issues in addition to lifestyle risk factors and medical ideas about biological functioning and disease. There appears to be a range of sociocultural explanations available for these people to draw on when making sense of illness. We argue that the prevalence of structural explanations may be due, in part, to cultural shifts and increased critical reaction to various social reforms. Our findings support the idea that people’s views are socially constructed to account for the complexities of health and illness as part of everyday life.

Robert Winston's Superhuman

Health psychologists are being challenged by researchers to consider interdisciplinary approaches to health research, particularly around media representations. This article argues that the praxis and research of health psychology might benefit from strategic and interdisciplinary readings of media texts. It argues that insights from current documentary theory are important because they show us how documentary texts are structured and how medical documentary deploys techniques from medicine itself in order to effect certain persuasive discursive shifts in our wider culture. The article takes the BBC documentary series Superhumanas its example and explores this text as it involves media spectacle, medical surveillance of the body and of patients and the positioning of patient narratives of personal experiences with medical intervention.

'I see her being obesed!': Public pedagogy, reality media and the obesity crisis

In recent years a proliferation of reality based media focusing on the body, diet and exercise have sought not only to entertain audiences, but also to operate as pedagogical sites through which to encourage populations to undertake surveillance of their own and others' bodies in order to address a so-called 'obesity epidemic' sweeping across western society. This article examines how reality media function within a broader 'surveillant assemblage' (Haggerty and Ericson, 2000) of obesity. Specifically, the article explores how this assemblage functions through interdependent connections between parenting, social class and broader political discourses of parenting and health risks which produce affective relationalities of the body.

Widening the Psychiatric gaze: reflections on PsychoDoctor, depression, and recent transitions in japanese mental health care

Japan has one of the world's highest rates of psychiatric institutionalization, and popular images of mental health care and public attitudes toward mental illness there have been stigmatized for decades. However, there are transitions underway that are reshaping the mental health care landscape as well as affecting public representations of mental illness. Those transitions include attempts to promote community-based care, move away from long-term hospitalization, reduce stigma, increase utilization of services, and bring clinical psychological services under the national health insurance umbrella. This article discusses one cultural representation in which those transitions are brought into relief: a 2002 television series entitled PsychoDoctor that portrayed the clinical practice of a psychiatrist. The article analyzes the messages inherent in the series about the nature of mental illness, the everyday-ness of sufferers, and the expanded repertoire of treatments now available. In so doing, the article suggests that the efforts of progressive clinicians, pharmaceutical companies, and mental health activists to put forth new images of mental illness and mental health care are now having a degree of success in the arena of popular culture.

A decade of research on health content in the media: the focus on health challenges and sociocultural context and attendant informational and ideological problems

There is a burgeoning interest in the health and illness content of popular media in the domains of advertising, journalism, and entertainment. This article reviews the past 10 years of this research, describing the relationship between the health topics addressed in the research, the shifting focus of concerns about the media, and, ultimately, the variation in problems for health promotion. I suggest that research attending to topics related to bodily health challenges focused on whether popular media accurately or appropriately represented health challenges. The implication was that there is some consensus about more right or wrong, complete or incomplete ways of representing an issue; the problem was that the media are generally wrong. Alternatively, research addressing topics related to sociocultural context issues focused on how certain interests are privileged in the media. The implication was that competing groups are making claims on the system, but the problem was that popular media marginalizes certain interests. In short, popular media is not likely to facilitate understandings helpful to individuals coping with health challenges and is likely to perpetuate social and political power differentials with regard to health-related issues. I conclude by offering some possibilities for future health media content research.

Media activism and Internet use by people with HIV/AIDS

This paper seeks to understand better the media practices of people who are directly affected by an illness or health problem. Internet sites that have been created by people with HIV/AIDS are examined as a strategy for self-representation. This analysis identifies four prominent 'organising themes' in Internet sites: autobiography; expertise; self promotion; and dissent. It is argued that there is a connection between media activism within the contemporary AIDS movement and Internet use among people with HIV/AIDS. This paper discusses the potential of the Internet, as a form of media activism, to raise the private troubles of people with health problems as public issues through a revitalisation of the public sphere in contemporary post-industrial societies.

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.

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

The medical profession remains central to the provision of health care and the treatment of illness within contemporary society. However, the image of doctors and the relationship of the profession with the public is contested. The public persona of doctors has been subjected to re-negotiation in recent years as a result of factors such as health care reforms, the increased autonomy of other health professionals, the rise of the health consumer, and well-publicised cases of medical misadventure. We argue that television viewing is one influential way through which images of medical doctors are socially negotiated. This paper explores the construction of doctors through an analysis of television health documentary coverage and the accounts of lower SES participants in New Zealand. It demonstrates how televised depictions of doctors are integrated into the lifeworlds of viewers. We show that multiple and often contradictory representations of doctors, within both television health coverage and the accounts of our participants, conflate the traditional characterization of the caring professional with more recently established characterizations such as the medical entrepreneur and the bungling quack. The result is a complex and contextually variable image of doctors that embodies tensions surrounding public anxiety over health care reform. Recourse to this more pluralistic image of doctors provides a way for participants to work through the dilemmas posed by reduced access to medical care and the uncertainties of medical treatment, while still maintaining support for universal access to medical care.

Communication skills: some problems in nursing education and practice

This article is based on a literature review carried out as part of a study of communication skills training in pre-registration nursing education in England in 2000. A systematic literature search was conducted and 200 articles were found that were relevant to the study. Definitional problems were found, with terms such as communication skills and interpersonal skills being used interchangeably. The term communications strategies is suggested to overcome these problems, as it reflects the logical organization of a number of different communication skills within a theoretical or empirical framework. Problems in current communication skills teaching and social barriers to using communication skills in practice are discussed. It is concluded that problems continue to exist in these areas and that an emphasis on both aspects is needed if patient and staff satisfaction is to be improved.