Abstract
Media Health: The Personal in Public Stories ‘focuses on how journalists and other media actors apply personalized frames and narratives, both visual and verbal, in representing and conveying health issues’ (p. 11). The editors of this collection explain that two main media trends have motivated them to write this book: the increased coverage of health issues by the media and the fact that ‘the media are increasingly raising issues traditionally connected to the private sphere in public spaces’ (p. 11). The empirical data presented in the volume are from the Nordic countries, which the editors argue present an interesting case study of very high levels of press freedom coupled up with a high level of regulation and a high level of media consumption. The book is split into four main parts with 10 chapters in total, the majority of which utilize qualitative approaches. Part I, ‘Personalized Service Journalism’, consists of two chapters – one presenting a study of two tabloid Norwegian newspapers and another one ‘offering a historical overview of the development of personalized traits in health news’. Part II, ‘Health, Identity and Stigma’, then comprises three chapters on a series of articles in a Danish newspaper called Hit by Life, a Norwegian TV series on a young journalist coming to grips with his homosexuality and the coverage of a doping scandal. Part III, ‘Media and Health Politics’, includes three chapters presenting ‘three cases in which health has been politicized to varying degrees in the media’ (p. 16) – egg donation, a social media campaign by parents who have lost their care benefits in Norway and the digitization of the health service in Finland. The final part, ‘Covering and Coping with Crises’, involves two chapters related to health crises – the Ebola outbreak’s coverage by Danish and Norwegian newspapers, and journalists’ own potential drama as a result of dealing with crises. All in all, this is a rich volume offering an interesting selection of case studies from the Nordic countries.