(De)constructing Health NewsAn analysis of the lifecycle of elderly-related health news stories through

multi-sited, linguistic ethnographic research

Jana DeclercqGhent University

Interdisciplinary Discourse Studies workshop, Aalborg University24-26/08/2015

Outline

•The entire project:▫Research group structure ▫General background: why elderly-related

health news?▫Research design

•My PhD:▫Research questions▫Method▫Challenges

(De)Constructing Health NewsA transdisciplinary investigation:• Communication studies• Journalism studies• Linguistics• Sociology• Medicine

Health, Media & Society (www.healthmediasociety.net)

(De)Constructing Health NewsTeam:• 6 Supervisors• 1 postdoc researcher• 4 PhD researchers

Why health? Why news?

Why the elderly?

Four Societal Evolutions

• Increasing health care costs• Ageing of the population• Medicalization• Healthism

Health & Elderly: 4 Societal Evolutions

• Increasing health care costs• Ageing of the population• Medicalization• Healthism

Why media-central perspective?

Medical Journalism

“All this information not only influences awareness, attitudes, and intentions but

may also contribute to changes in behavior, health care utilization, clinical practices,

and health policies.” (Levi 2001: 4)

Research Design

STAKEHOLDERANALYSISSociology

NEWS STORY LIFECYCLE ANALYSIS

Linguistics

NEWS OUTPUT: CONTENT, FRAMES,

DISCOURSES

Journalism Studies

AUDIENCE RESEARCH

Communication studies

My PhD

•What are the production processes and practices underlying the construction of elderly-related health news at different stakeholders?

•How do media and other stakeholders interact, and which changes do news stories undergo while travelling back and forth between them?

My PhD

• Method:▫ Multi-sited, case-oriented, linguistic

ethnography• Sites:

▫ Newspaper▫ Monthly magazine targeting people over 50▫ Pharmaceutical company▫ Health insurance agency

Linguistic Ethnography

Ethnography?• Origins in anthropology• ≠ fieldwork, method of data collection• = paradigm

“Reality in its kaleidoscopic, complex, complicated nature” (Blommaert 2006: 14)

“Capacity of challenging established views” (Blommaert 2006: 13)

Linguistic Ethnography

•Language and the (social) world are mutually shaping (Rampton 2007)

•We need to: ▫study language and talk in interaction to

understand the context, ▫and study the context to understand the

language •Materiality

Focus on discursive data

Linguistic ethnography

•“An open and exploratory, even experimental platform” (Blommaert 2007: 683)

•Very data-driven (Agar 1996)

•Combining different kinds of:▫Data▫Frameworks ▫Methods and units of analysis

•Role of the researcher

Challenges

•Unpredictable data •Access to elite settings•Ethics & anonymization•Possibly distorting presence of the researcher•Openness of the platform:

linguistic/philosophical theoretical grounding

•Transdisciplinarity!▫Combining frameworks/methods/… in my PhD▫Combining insights from four different PhDs

Theo Van Leeuwen (2005:8)

‘The idea of discipline is in effect narrowed down to “skill”- to the analytical and

interpretative skills that can contribute in specific ways to integrated projects. In

such a context I no longer say, for instance, “I am a linguist”, setting myself apart from other researchers, but, “I know how to do cetain types of linguistic research and can

therefore make a specific and useful contribution to interdisciplinary research

projects.’

Thank you for listening!