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The human drama of genetics: ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ media representations of inherited breast cancer
Author(s) -
Henderson Lesley,
Kitzinger Jenny
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9566.00173
Subject(s) - newspaper , drama , framing (construction) , media coverage , variety (cybernetics) , media content , news media , popular media , sociology , mass media , media studies , public relations , political science , history , multimedia , computer science , law , art , visual arts , archaeology , artificial intelligence
This paper examines media coverage of ‘breast cancer genetics’, and explores its implications for public understanding. We present a content analysis of coverage in British newspapers and look at a variety of popular forms, including women’s magazines, television soap opera and radio drama. Genetic/inherited risk receives a great deal of coverage across a wide range of media formats and outlets. Much of this attention has focused on individuals from ‘high risk families’ and dilemmas around prophylactic mastectomies. Through examining media coverage, combined with interviews with media personnel and their sources, we show why this story proved so attractive to the media and highlight the different production values which influence coverage. Finally, we introduce preliminary findings from focus group discussions to demonstrate how such ‘human interest’ framing has engaged audience attention and influenced public understandings. The paper concludes by highlighting the implications for analysing, predicting, and engaging with, media representations of science.