Table of Contents

1. Health and Media: An Overview (Clive Seale).

2. ‘Radical Blueprint for Social Change’? Media Representations of New Labour’s Policies and Inequalities on Public Health (Rosemary Davidson, Kate Hunt and Jenny Kitzinger).

3. Narrativity and the Mediation of Health Reform Agendas (Darrin Hodgetts and Kerry Chamberlain.

4. Going Public: References to the News Media in NHS Contract Negotiations (David Hughes and Lesley Gruffitgs).

5. ‘Ignorance is Bliss Sometimes’: Constraints on the Emergence of the ‘Informed Patient’ in the Changing Landscapes of Health Information (Flis Henwood, Sally Wyatt, Angie Hart and Julie Smith).

6. Media Activism and Internet Use by People with HIV/AIDS (James Gillett).

7. Popular Media and ‘Excessive Daytime Sleepiness’: A Study of Rhetorical Authority in Medical Sociology (Steve Kroll-Smith).

8. Bio-phobias/Techno-philias: Virtual Reality Exposure as Treatment for Phobias of ‘Nature’ (Joyce Davidson and Mick Smith).

9. Healthy Viewing: The Reception of Medical Narratives (Solange Davin).

10. ‘About a Year Before the Breakdown I Was Having Symptoms’: Sadness, Pathology and the Australian Newspaper Media (Rob Rowe, Farida Tilbury, Mark Rapley and Ilse O’Ferrall).

Notes on Contributors.

Index.

About the Author

Clive Seale is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Human Sciences, Brunel University. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Researching Society and Culture (1998), Constructing Death: the Sociology of Dying and Bereavement (1998), The Quality of Qualitative Research (1999), Health and Disease: A Reader (Third Edition, 2002), and Media and Health (2002).