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

Simon J. Williams, Clive Seale, Sharon Boden, Pam K. Lowe, Deborah L. Steinberg

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

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.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)251-268
Number of pages18
JournalHealth
Volume12
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2008

Keywords

  • insomnia
  • media
  • medicalization
  • press
  • snoring

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