Transcending the medical/media opposition in research on news coverage of health and medicine

Health and medicine are major topics of news coverage, but research on health and medical reporting has remained mainly confined to specialist subfields, with less impact on broader academic fields, including journalism studies, than would seem warranted by its importance. This article argues that a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Media, culture & society culture & society, 2015-01, Vol.37 (1), p.85-100
Main Authors: Hallin, Daniel C, Briggs, Charles L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alternative Approaches
Development
General Public
Health
Health Research
Journalism
Knowledge
Literature
Media coverage
Medical sociology
Medicine
Methodology (Data Collection)
News
News Coverage
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Summary:Health and medicine are major topics of news coverage, but research on health and medical reporting has remained mainly confined to specialist subfields, with less impact on broader academic fields, including journalism studies, than would seem warranted by its importance. This article argues that assumptions implicit in much of this literature have limited the development of a wider tradition of research on health journalism. We point particularly to what we call the linear-reflectionist perspective, which sees health journalism as an often-flawed mechanism for transmitting pre-existing medical knowledge to the mass public. We propose an alternative framework that seeks to illuminate the complexity and importance of this field of study.
ISSN:0163-4437
1460-3675
DOI:10.1177/0163443714549090