Lesley Henderson

Representing infant feeding: content analysis of British media portrayals of bottle feeding and breast feeding

Abstract Objective: To examine how breast feeding and bottle feeding are represented by the British media. Design: Content analysis. Subjects: Television programmes and newspaper articles that made reference to infant feeding during March 1999. Setting: UK mass media. Main outcome measures: Visual and verbal references to breast or bottle feeding in newspapers and television programmes. Results: Overall, 235 references to infant feeding were identified in the television sample and 38 in the newspaper sample. Bottle feeding was shown more often than breast feeding and was presented as less problematic. Bottle feeding was associated with “ordinary” families whereas breast feeding was associated with middle class or celebrity women. The health risks of formula milk and the health benefits of breast feeding were rarely mentioned. Conclusions: The media rarely present positive information on breast feeding, even though this feeding practice is associated with the most health benefits. Health professionals and policy makers should be aware of patterns in media coverage and the cultural background within which women make decisions about infant feeding.

The human drama of genetics: ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ media representations of inherited breast cancer

This paper examines media coverage of ‘breast cancer genetics’, and explores its implications for public understanding. We present a content analysis of coverage in British newspapers and look at a variety of popular forms, including women’s magazines, television soap opera and radio drama. Genetic/inherited risk receives a great deal of coverage across a wide range of media formats and outlets. Much of this attention has focused on individuals from ‘high risk families’ and dilemmas around prophylactic mastectomies. Through examining media coverage, combined with interviews with media personnel and their sources, we show why this story proved so attractive to the media and highlight the different production values which influence coverage. Finally, we introduce preliminary findings from focus group discussions to demonstrate how such ‘human interest’ framing has engaged audience attention and influenced public understandings. The paper concludes by highlighting the implications for analysing, predicting, and engaging with, media representations of science.

The impact of the mass media on public images of mental illness: media content and audience belief

An analysis of media content in April 1993 found that two-thirds of items dealing with mental health issues forged a link between mental illness and violence. Using some of this material, the impact on the beliefs of an audience sample was explored. Six general groups and one user group took part in the study. Two-fifths of the general sample believed mental illness to be associated with violence and gave the media as their source. While some respondents with personal knowledge of mental illness, including the user group, rejected the dominant media message, others accepted it against the evidence of their own eyes. The findings indicate the importance of working with the media to destigmatise mental health problems.

Perceptions of childhood immunization in a minority community: qualitative study.

Summary Objective To assess reasons for low uptake of immunization amongst orthodox Jewish families. Design Qualitative interviews with 25 orthodox Jewish mothers and 10 local health care workers. Setting The orthodox Jewish community in North East London. Main outcome measures Identification of views on immunization in the orthodox Jewish community. Results In a community assumed to be relatively insulated from direct media influence, word of mouth is nevertheless a potent source of rumours about vaccination dangers. The origins of these may lie in media scares that contribute to anxieties about MMR. At the same time, close community cohesion leads to a sense of relative safety in relation to tuberculosis, with consequent low rates of BCG uptake. Thus low uptake of different immunizations arises from enhanced feelings of both safety and danger. Low uptake was not found to be due to the practical difficulties associated with large families, or to perceived insensitive cultural practices of health care providers. Conclusions The views and practices of members of this community are not homogeneous and may change over time. It is important that assumptions concerning the role of religious beliefs do not act as an obstacle for providing clear messages concerning immunization, and community norms may be challenged by explicitly using its social networks to communicate more positive messages about immunization. The study provides a useful example of how social networks may reinforce or challenge misinformation about health and risk and the complex nature of decision making about childrens health.

Orchestrating a science ‘event’: the case of the Human Genome Project

Abstract June 2000 saw the triumphal announcement of the completion of the human genome ‘working draft’. This attracted extensive, peak and vivid coverage. While several studies have explored media coverage of the announcement, there has been little discussion of the production process: the overall aims, values and structures which underpinned this staged event. This article redresses this gap and draws on ten interviews with UK journalists and their sources to show how reporting was influenced by a number of factors, including news values, organisational identity, the history of reporting and editorial interest. This paper thus gives valuable insights into how science stories are ‘made’ and presented in terms of the dynamics of coverage. It reveals the ways in which political and economic factors may drive a science story and provides crucial insights into the key relationships which influence and shape media reporting of scientific research.

TELEVISION NEWS AND THE SYMBOLIC CRIMINALISATION OF YOUNG PEOPLE

This essay combines quantitative and qualitative analysis of six UK television news programmes. It seeks to analyse the representation of young people within broadcast news provision at a time when media representations, political discourse and policy making generally appear to be invoking young people as something of a folk devil or a locus for moral panics. The quantitative analysis examines the frequency with which young people appear as main actors across a range of different subjects and analyses the role of young people as news sources. It finds a strong correlation between young people and violent crime. A qualitative analysis of four “special reports” or backgrounders on channel Fives Five News explores the representation of young people in more detail, paying attention to contradictions and tensions in the reports, the role of statistics in crime reporting, the role of victims of crime and the tensions between conflicting news frames.

‘News for Everyone? Perspectives of Young People and Journalists on Political Reporting in UK Television’

Numerous studies have focused on young people and the extent to which they are politically (dis)connected; but we know far less about how ‘young people’ are perceived by journalists and editors who ‘make’ political news. This article reflects on a qualitative study involving focus groups with young adults aged 16–24 years (n = 80) and interviews with television news journalists and editors (n = 26). Young people perceived television news as overly focused on youth crime and anti-social behaviour, finding it difficult to connect mainstream political news with the lived reality of everyday life. Journalists are under considerable pressure to attract young audiences of ‘plugged in achievers’ and defensive of what they consider to be legitimate focus on ‘Westminster’ power. The views and occupational practices of political journalists should be studied if we are to shed light on news values that underpin reporting and identify opportunities by which inequities of access can be challenged.

Popular television and public mental health: Creating media entertainment from mental distress

Abstract This paper explores how tensions and power differentials within public mental health interact with the practices of media production in entertainment television. I present the findings of a qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews with story consultants from mental health organisations and Senior Executives, Producers and script-writers from UK television series (n = 14). Story advisors welcome the opportunity to reach larger and younger audiences in distinct ways and to share the ‘lived experience’ of mental distress through well-researched characters. They accept their relative lack of power to negotiate dramatic storylines which conflate mental distress with criminality and may undermine their anti-stigma ideals. The ‘medical model’ is prioritised in mainstream television drama and the causes of mental distress framed in biomedical terms. Storylines tend to emphasise the certain benefits of medication and marginalise self-management of conditions. Television industry professionals recognise their anti-stigma public service role and are receptive to working with programme consultants to help create authentic characters. Perceptions of the nature of drama as requiring resolution may help to explain the principal focus on biomedical conceptualisations of mental distress. Medication provides a relatively simple on-screen solution to resolve complex stories. Entertainment television operates within limited ideological frames. Mental distress and stigma are addressed at an individual, not collective level. Debates within the survivor movement and public mental health concerning medication, treatment and recovery tend to be obscured. These might provide a productive alternative vein of storytelling that could broaden our understanding of the social meaning of suffering and thus help challenge stigma.

Doctors in space (ships): biomedical uncertainties and medical authority in imagined futures

There has been considerable interest in images of medicine in popular science fiction and in representations of doctors in television fiction. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to doctors administering space medicine in science fiction. This article redresses this gap. We analyse the evolving figure of ‘the doctor’ in different popular science fiction television series. Building upon debates within Medical Sociology, Cultural Studies and Media Studies we argue that the figure of ‘the doctor’ is discursively deployed to act as the moral compass at the centre of the programme narrative. Our analysis highlights that the qualities, norms and ethics represented by doctors in space (ships) are intertwined with issues of gender equality, speciesism and posthuman ethics. We explore the signifying practices and political articulations that are played out through these cultural imaginaries. For example, the ways in which ‘the simple country doctor’ is deployed to help establish hegemonic formations concerning potentially destabilising technoscientific futures involving alternative sexualities, or military dystopia. Doctors mostly function to provide the ethical point of narrative stability within a world in flux, referencing a nostalgia for the traditional, attentive, humanistic family physician. The science fiction doctor facilitates the personalisation of technological change and thus becomes a useful conduit through which societal fears and anxieties concerning medicine, bioethics and morality in a ‘post 9/11’ world can be expressed and explored.

Flood disasters in the United Kingdom and India: A critical discourse analysis of media reporting:

Reports of flooding are becoming more frequent in the UK media, and evidence from the UK Environment Agency indicates that ‘living with flooding’ will become commonplace rather than exceptional. This study is the first to adopt a critical discourse analysis approach to compare UK newspaper reporting of floods in the developed and developing world. We present our analysis of major flood incidents in Northern England and Chennai, India, in 2015. Our findings identify that UK newspapers not only give greater prominence to flooding events that are local but also frame differently those affected. Reports of floods in Northern England reinforced similarities and shared values between victims and assumed readers by drawing upon personal stories, emotions and suffering. By contrast, reports about floods in Chennai portrayed victims as anonymous ‘distant Others’, emphasising the drama of the incident rather than the plight of individuals. We argue that the newspapers’ approach to covering flooding reveals how the Western-dominated global media continue to emphasise difference rather than similarity between people in the developed and developing world, presenting flooding in the United Kingdom as exceptional and flooding in India as normalised. We believe these findings have important implications in the context of globalisation and increasing migration.