Work

Medicalization and beyond: the social construction of insomnia and snoring in the news

Year: 2008

Type: article

Abstract: What role do the media play in the medicalization of sleep problems? This article, based on a British Academy funded project, uses qualitative textual analysis to examine representations of insomnia and snoring in a large representative sample of newspaper articles taken from the UK national press from the mid-1980s to the present day. Constructed as 'common problems' in the population at large, insomnia and snoring we show are differentially located in terms of medicalizing-healthicizing discourses and debates. Our findings also suggest important differences in the gendered construction of these problems and in terms of tabloid and 'broadsheet' newspaper coverage of these issues. Newspaper constructions of sleep, it is concluded, are complex, depending on both the 'problem' and the paper in question.

Source: Health An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health Illness and Medicine

DOI: 10.1177/1363459307086846

Authors: Simon. J. Williams, Clive Seale, Sharon Boden, Pam Lowe, Deborah Lynn Steinberg

Institutions: University of Warwick, Brunel University of London, Keele University, Aston University

Language: English

Topic: Sleep and related disorders

Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W2148349899

FWCI: 4.096

Cites: 19

Cited by: 56

Related to: 10