From Dominant Perspective to Critical Perspective in Health Communication: Analysis of Turkish Television Health Programs in terms of Critical Health Communication

Health communication, which has become a discipline since the mid-twentieth century, has become more crucial especially with the complexness of healthcare applications and health information practices. This has led to an increase in the number of researches and academic studies in the field of health communication and, also different approaches emerged regarding this debate. In order to improve the health of the individual and society, the theories used in the field of health communication are generally limited to individual information and behavior change models. Both the health behavior models, and health communication theory/models used are socio-psychological based approaches. Therefore, the methods used are individually focused. As a result, communication is typically understood as health information transfer and perception. After the changing economic-political approach and public broadcasting replaced by private broadcasting in the 1980s, it’s observed that the health communication practices on television started to show an approach towards the consumption of health services and products. This view mentioned above was called ‘dominant health communication’ in the 1990s and a new approach of the field emerged. Critical approach discusses that health is a social phenomenon and that all responsibility cannot be given to the individual. In this case, outside the individual factors such as economy, politics, culture, environment, education gender and even geography are important in the development and outcomes of health. In this study, it will be discussed that the ongoing health communication practices, which is termed dominant health communication, do not provide a solution to the existing health inequality in the society, on the contrary, they provide the reproduction and dissemination of the ideologies of the sovereign powers and a consent for the consumption of health products and services in the society. Therefore, in this study, health programs on mainstream television channels in Turkey will be analyzed in terms of critical health communication. Critical discourse analysis will be used as the main method of the study. Keywords: critical health communication, dominant health communication, critical discourse analysis, Turkish television health programs