Greg Philo

Effects of a drug overdose in a television drama on presentations to hospital for self poisoning: time series and questionnaire study

Abstract Objectives: To determine whether a serious paracetamol overdose in the medical television drama Casualty altered the incidence and nature of general hospital presentations for deliberate self poisoning. Design: Interrupted time series analysis of presentations for self poisoning at accident and emergency departments during three week periods before and after the broadcast. Questionnaire responses collected from self poisoning patients during the same periods. Setting: 49 accident and emergency departments and psychiatric services in United Kingdom collected incidence data; 25 services collected questionnaire data. Subjects: 4403 self poisoning patients; questionnaires completed for 1047. Main outcome measures: Change in presentation rates for self poisoning in the three weeks after the broadcast compared with the three weeks before, use of paracetamol and other drugs for self poisoning, and the nature of overdoses in viewers of the broadcast compared with non-viewers. Results: Presentations for self poisoning increased by 17% (95% confidence interval 7% to 28%) in the week after the broadcast and by 9% (0 to 19%) in the second week. Increases in paracetamol overdoses were more marked than increases in non-paracetamol overdoses. Thirty two patients who presented in the week after the broadcast and were interviewed had seen the episode—20%said that it had influenced their decision to take an overdose, and 17% said it had influenced their choice of drug. The use of paracetamol for overdose doubled among viewers of Casualtyafter the episode (rise of 106%; 28% to 232%). Conclusions: Broadcast of popular television dramas depicting self poisoning may have a short term influence in terms of increases in hospital presentation for overdose and changes in the choice of drug taken. This raises serious questions about the advisability of the media portraying suicidal behaviour.

CAN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS SUCCESSFULLY EXPLAIN THE CONTENT OF MEDIA AND JOURNALISTIC PRACTICE

It is argued here that textual analysis of media accounts requires the study of the social structures from which competing ideological explanations develop. A comparison of the methods of the Glasgow University Media Group with the work of Norman Fairclough and Teun van Dijk shows that discourse analysis which remains text-based has problems in its ability to show: (1) the origins of competing discourses and how they relate to different social interests, (2) the diversity of social accounts compared to what is present (and absent) in a specific text, (3) the impact of external factors such as professional media practice on the manner in which the discourses are represented, and (4) what the text actually means to different parts of the audience. There are other problems with “text only” analyses in relation to (1) the accuracy of representations, (2) the significance of texts to our own audience, and (3) the question of how rhetoric “belongs to” or is used by different social interests. To overcome these problems requires a method which analyses processes of production, content, reception and circulation of social meaning simultaneously.

ACTIVE AUDIENCES AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE

This article examines key arguments in media and cultural studies including the “encoding/decoding” model which have been used to emphasise the active nature of audiences and their capacity to resist messages as well as to create their own. It compares these with recent studies which show that audiences can indeed sometimes be active and critical but which also found strong evidence pointing to the power and influence of media. This dimension of media power is often neglected in current scholarship. The arguments which have led to this “reduced” view of media effects are re-evaluated in relation to contemporary evidence on the nature of reception processes.

Media coverage and public understanding of sentencing policy in relation to crimes against children

This research examines how the media report on sentences given to those who commit serious crimes against children and how this impacts on public knowledge and attitudes. Three months of press and television coverage were analysed in order to establish the editorial lines that are taken in different sections of the media and how they are promoted by selective reporting of sentencing. Results indicate that a small number of very high profile crimes account for a significant proportion of reporting in this area and often, particularly in the tabloid press, important information regarding sentencing rationale is sidelined in favour of moral condemnation and criticism of the judiciary. Polling data indicate that public attitudes are highly critical of sentencing but also confused about the meaning of tariffs. The article concludes by discussing what can be done to promote a more informed public debate over penal policy in this area.

Cultural compliance and critical media studies

This commentary is a challenge to social scientists. In it we ask why much of social science and in particular media and cultural studies can now communicate little that is critical or relevant to its own society. In the ferment of social and political ideas which we associate with the 1960s, it was assumed that science could be ‘for the people’ and that it would be possible to link theory and practice in progressive rational critique. These ideas were not new and indeed had their origins in Enlightenment thinking. But the period of post-war consensual politics certainly increased demands for academic approaches which were relevant and critical. In the period which followed there was a profound shift in political power towards the right, in both the USA and in Britain. The 1980s saw a ferocious struggle to establish a new dominance for the free market. This involved pushing back the restraining influences of the post-war consensus with its commitment to full employment and social welfare. This period was therefore a high point in the development of news management and of state and business public relations – the age of spin doctors (Miller and Dinan, 2000). Yet strangely it was also during this period that the concept of ideology disappeared from much academic work in media and cultural studies. A new set of theoretical questions and issues now preoccupied cultural theorists. We will argue here that much media and cultural studies had in fact wandered up a series of theoretical dead ends. To illustrate this, we will look first at the cultural and material changes which did occur in our society and then at the problems with the new directions taken by media and cultural studies. The rise of the New Right in the 1980s did not signify a new age or a new type of society. The same social relations of production existed (between employers and employed) and the same tendencies of capital to accumulate. It continued to agglomerate into larger and larger units giving greater power in the market. For example, in 1996 the £28 billion merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas in America gave them nearly two-thirds of the world’s commercial airline market and over half of the US military aircraft production. In the same year, the proposed

Political advertising, popular belief and the 1992 British general election

Analyse de la facon dont les partis politiques britanniques utilisent les medias pour leur campagne electorale et la diffusion de leur ideologie politique. Identification des liens entre politique de communication et reussite electorale

One-dimensional News — Television and the Control of Explanation

The lamps in Parliament Square glister across the Thames, the camera moves to Big Ben, a close-up, it’s ten o’clock — Bong! — the familiar voice of Reginald Bosanquet — ‘M.P.’s pay rise endangers Social Contract’ — Bong! — ‘Royal Family squares up for massive wage claim’ — Bong! — ‘British Leyland’s future threatened by huge dividend payouts’ — Bong! — ‘Traffic to be disrupted by Queen’s Procession’.

The role of the press in the war on asylum

An article based on excerpts from a chapter in the book, Bad News for Refugees by the Glasgow Media Group. It examines, in a detailed content analysis of sixty-nine articles in UK national papers in June 2011, how the rightwing press helped set the political agenda on immigration through a consistent conflation of issues of economic and forced migration, an emphasis on numbers as a threat, the pointing to migrants as an economic burden and potential criminals and a stress on the need for immigration controls.