Main description:

This book explores the unique contribution that critical communication studies can bring to our understanding of health. It covers several broad themes: representing and mediating health; marketing and promoting health, co-producing health; and managing health crises and risks. Chapters speak to moral and social regulation through health communication, technologies of health, healthism and governmentality. They engage with historical and contemporary issues, offering readers theoretically grounded perspectives. At base, the book explores what a critical communication approach to health might look like, revealing in important-and sometimes surprising-ways how communication sits at the centre of understanding how health is constructed, contested, and made meaningful.

Contents:

Communication and Health: An Introduction.- Part I: Representing Health.- Beyond Representation: Media Frames and Communicating Health.- No Way to Live: Fat Bodies on Reality Television.- "Who Wants to Live Forever? You Want to Live Well": The Appeal to Health in Coverage of Anti-Ageing Science and Medicine.- Feeling by Looking: Public Health Handwashing Posters as Emplaced Vital Media.- Part II: Marketing and Promoting Health.- "Great Taste! Fun for Kids!": Marketing Vitamins for Children.- Imperial Tobacco Canada and Health Reassurance Cigarette Marketing during the 1970s.- Influencing Diet: Social Media, Micro-Celebrity, Food and Health.- Marketing Mental Health: Critical Reflections on Literacy, Branding and Anti-Stigma Campaigns.- Part III: Co-Producing Health.- Co-Authoring the 'Person' in Person-Centred Care: A Critical Narrative Analysis of Patient Stories on Healthcare Organization Websites.- The Branding of Movember and the Co-Production of Men's Health.- The Social Construction of 'Good Health'.- Part IV: Managing Health: Troubling Surveillance and Communicating Risk.- "You Don't Own a FitBit, the FitBit Owns You": A Taxonomy of Privacy Attitudes in the Context of Self-Quantification.- Cases and Traces, Platforms and Publics: Big Data and Health Surveillance.- Challenges in Vaccine Communication.- Critical Communication Studies and COVID-19: Mediation, Discourse, and Masks.