Eating disorders in the media: The changing nature of UK newspaper reports

Abstract

Popular journalists pursue an entertainment agenda for their reporting of health stories and this study shows both the constraints and public education opportunities provided by this genre.

The Effects of Stigma on Recovery Attitudes in People With Anorexia Nervosa in Intensive Treatment

“…According to Corrigan et al (2009), people become aware of the stigma associated with mental illness through the socialization process, including exposure to stereotypical images of people with mental illnesses in the mass media. For instance, a major source of information about eating disorders comes from the media, which often depicts these illnesses as trivial problems that are related to a desire to emulate celebrities in arts and entertainment (O'Hara and Smith, 2007;Shepherd and Seale, 2010). The second stage (agreement) occurs when the person agrees with the stigma assigned to those with a mental illness.…”

A Mean Read

“…For example, content analyses are replete in newspapers and cover wide topics such as physical activity (Granner, Sharpe, Burroughs, Firleds, & Hallenbeck, 2010), eating disorders (Shepherd & Seale, 2010), police violence (Hirschfield & Simon, 2010) and attitudes towards wolves (Houston, Bruskotter, & Fan, 2010). Likewise, content analyses on magazines (e.g., Clarke, 2009;Covert & Wasburn, 2007) and books (e.g., Herbozo, Tantleff-Dunn, GokeeLarose, & Thompson, 2004;Whissell, 1998) are also common.…”

(Un)twisted: talking back to media representations of eating disorders

“…In wider terms, the research on mass media representations of EDs reflects a long-standing concern about the adequacy of media reporting, and the implications this has for public understandings of EDs (Shepherd and Seale, 2010 Shepherd and Seale, 2010). As acknowledged in the introduction, my interest is in examining how representations were understood and evaluated via the experiences and words of the participants.…”