Self-injury among adolescents has been widely documented in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia; however, news coverage of self-injury has not been examined. This study analyzes 78 news accounts of self-injury among adolescents in the United States from 2007 to 2012, using critical cultural studies as a theoretical foundation and a methodology informed by Kenneth Burke's dramatism. Narrative elements within the sample are examined in relationship to one another in order to reveal implicit meanings within the news stories. Looking across the sample, I then use a framework developed by Labov and Waletzky to examine a dominant meta-narrative that downplays social causes of self-injury-notably, various forms of trauma such as childhood sexual abuse-and instead frames self-injury as a personal choice. As a result, the remedy to the problem is not constructed as redress of contemporary pressures placed upon young people, but rather, as the responsibility of adolescents to conform to the social system that causes them to hurt themselves.
Media representations of illnesses, particularly those associated with stigma such as non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), not only define health conditions for mass audiences, but generally do so in ways that are consistent with dominant ideologies. This article examines the construction of non-suicidal self-injury as practiced by female adolescents and young adults in four US films: Girl, Interrupted, Painful Secrets, Prozac Nation, and Thirteen. The methodology used to examine the films' narrative structure is Kenneth Burke's dramatism, while Julia Kristeva's concept of abjection informs the analysis. On one hand, a paradigmatic reading suggests that the films frame self-injury as resistance to repressive maternal domination of female adolescents. On the other hand, syntagmatic analysis reveals a privileged response to NSSI in the form of pacification administered by psychotherapists functioning as the return of the phallic-mother fantasy.
Welcome to Issue 3, Volume 6 of Qualitative Research in Medicine in Healthcare. The term “qualitative research” covers a wide range of theories and methodologies, and this issue certainly illustrates that diversity of approaches. As with most articles published in QRMH, authors featured in this issue worked through multiple manuscript iterations prior to acceptance for publication. Many other submitted manuscripts, of course, never make it that far. No doubt the story is the same for any reputable research journal. [...]
The term `telemedicine' refers to health care and health education transmitted over large distances via computer with interactive audio and video capabilities. Over the past decade, telemedicine has been widely hailed as a means of administering health care to rural areas where doctors are scarce. Most research on the subject emphasizes technological, regulatory, and utilitarian aspects of telemedicine. This study, however, develops a cultural studies perspective in order to examine how social relationships are negotiated with regard to telemedicine in a particular context. The contextual focus is South Dakota - a state where telemedicine has rapidly developed in response to an ongoing crisis in health care access. An overview of economic and health care conditions in South Dakota is followed by examinations of network structures through which telemedicine operates in the state and an analysis of how telemedicine is rhetorically constructed in the state's leading newspaper. Concluding sections discuss the hegemonic nature of telemedicine in South Dakota and raise questions about telemedicine in other contexts.
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