Making Health Public : How News Coverage Is Remaking Media, Medicine, and Contemporary Life

This book examines the relationship between media and medicine, considering the fundamental role of news coverage in constructing wider cultural understandings of health and disease. The authors advance the notion of ‘biomediatization’ and demonstrate how health knowledge is co-produced through connections between dispersed sites and forms of expertise. The chapters offer an innovative combination of media content analysis and ethnographic data on the production and circulation of health news, drawing on work with journalists, clinicians, health officials, medical researchers, marketers, and audiences. The volume provides students and scholars with unique insight into the significance and complexity of what health news does and how it is created.

Charles L. Briggs is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. His work combines linguistic and medical anthropology with socio-cultural anthropology and folkloristics.

Daniel C. Hallin is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego, USA. His work concerns journalism, political communication, and the comparative analysis of media systems.