Communication and Health

Charlene Elliott is Professor in the Department of Communication, Media and Film at the University of Calgary, jointly appointed with the Faculty of Kinesiology. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Food Marketing, Policy & Children’s Health. Her current program of research focuses on food promotion and policy (particularly food marketing to children and youth), communication and health, and sensory communication and regulation. Josh Greenberg is Director of the School of Journalism and Communication and Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Carleton University. His expertise is in health risk communication, with a focus on media coverage of outbreaks and other infectious disease risks; public risk perceptions of vaccination; and the risk communication strategies and activities of public health officials and organizations.

Communication and Health: An Introduction.- Part I: Representing Health.- Beyond Representation: Media Frames and Communicating Health.- No Way to Live: Fat Bodies on Reality Television.-  “Who Wants to Live Forever? You Want to Live Well”: The Appeal to Health in Coverage of Anti-Ageing Science and Medicine.- Feeling by Looking: Public Health Handwashing Posters as Emplaced Vital Media.- Part II: Marketing and Promoting Health.- “Great Taste! Fun for Kids!”: Marketing Vitamins for Children.- Imperial Tobacco Canada and Health Reassurance Cigarette Marketing during the 1970s.- Influencing Diet: Social Media, Micro-Celebrity, Food and Health.- Marketing Mental Health: Critical Reflections on Literacy, Branding and Anti-Stigma Campaigns.- Part III: Co-Producing Health.- Co-Authoring the ‘Person’ in Person-Centred Care: A Critical Narrative Analysis of Patient Stories on Healthcare Organization Websites.- The Branding of Movember and the Co-Production of Men’s Health.- TheSocial Construction of ‘Good Health’.- Part IV: Managing Health:  Troubling Surveillance and Communicating Risk.- “You Don’t Own a FitBit, the FitBit Owns You”: A Taxonomy of Privacy Attitudes in the Context of Self-Quantification.- Cases and Traces, Platforms and Publics: Big Data and Health Surveillance.- Challenges in Vaccine Communication.- Critical Communication Studies and COVID-19: Mediation, Discourse, and Masks.

“Communication and Health: Media, Marketing and Risk is a compilation of much-needed critical insights on the important intersection between communication and health. … this book will be a seminal reference not only for scholars of communication studies, but also for those working in public health, medical humanities, business and management, and other allied disciplines.” (Antony Hoyte-West, Komunikacija i kultura online, Vol. 14 (14), 2023)