2020 | 18 | Tele(visualizing) Health

This thematic issue of VIEW brings together articles that show how television has been an instrument for, as well as a mirror of, public service and specifically health services. Two approaches to this are featured and teased out. The first approach concerns health communication and campaigns, where information is diffused via television and strengthened or reinforced by visual and filmic means. The second concerns the structures that offer, manage and model norms of health and healthcare services. In introducing elements of the history of health, we hope to draw attention to the intersection of public health and television over the twentieth century, such that thinking about the relationship between them might change our understanding of both.
Co-edited by Tricia Close-Koenig, Angela Saward and Jessica Borge

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11

A Programme Like No Other: AIDS Prevention in French Television, 1995-1997
Mansier, Pascale (2020)
French television has broadcast health magazines since the 1950s. These magazines generally give more importance to medical expertise and curative medicine. In this article, I will present a programme that stands out from these, SIDAMAG, which was broadcast weekly in the mid-1990s. Targeting a young public and aiming to inform on preventive measures, SIDAMAG producers wanted to give space and voice to nonexperts. These three goals were only partially achieved. Preventive measures were present in all SIDAMAG shows however, content analysis showed that only 14% focused on prevention in youth. Furthermore, medical discourse remained dominant although significant space was given to witness testimonials.
Bad Vibes: Images of Communication, Emotional Balance and Health in East German Television, 1970s-1980s
Schnädelbach, Sandra (2020)
Analysing health education films from the German Democratic Republic broadcast on TV during the 1970s and 1980s, this paper explores how emotions were framed as health risks and how this framing corresponded with socialist ideas on communication and media theory. I argue that television offered an ideal medium for updating traditions of social hygiene and that it served as a means to the socialist concept of “emotional education”. Television and public health met in highlighting socialist ideas on social interaction: health education aimed at cultivating trust to reduce organic diseases. At the same time, creating trust and intimacy was one of the main promises of the new medium, a function bolstered by its location in the home. To achieve these, they turned to the emotional effects of the spoken word.
Continuity and Change in British Public Service Television’s Engagement with Mental Health
Selby, Hannah (2020)
This article explores factual television coverage of mental health by British public service broadcasters (PSB) from the post-war period, examining continuity and change by highlighting the range of voices given airtime, the variety of programme formats and stylistic presentation. It argues that British television has had a long commitment to educating the public about mental health, periodically examining mental health policies, and providing air-time for a range of perspectives. In addition, mental health conditions are now featured more widely, however newer factual genres emphasise experiential accounts and selfaccountability over critical investigation. By situating televisual representations of mental health within a historical framework of UK broadcasting and mental health policy, it contributes to the history of health and television, demonstrating the ways in which policy, broadcasting practices and cultural constructions of mental health are interrelated.
Don’t Smoke, Take Drink in Moderation, Do Walk a Lot and Do Not Gorge Yourself beyond Your Satiation: Health Education by Television in West Germany from the 1960s to the 1980s
Vollberg, Susanne (2020)
This article discusses health education through television in West Germany, with a focus on nutrition and physical activity. Public health initiatives on television contributed to the fitness boom of the late 1960s and 1970s that aimed to counterbalance post-war lifestyle changes within the West German population. The article uses individual TV programme formats and campaigns as examples to show that the 1970s marked the beginning of behaviour-oriented health education in West Germany. The ZDF health telemagazine GESUNDHEITSMAGAZIN PRAXIS gave advice, for example on proper food and conveyed how the audience was increasingly requested to actively participate, in order to encourage health-conscious behaviour.
From Family Doctor to Healthentainment: Health Topics in the Italian Public Service from Neo-Television to Post-television
Leonzi, Silvia; Ciofalo, Giovanni; Ugolini, Lorenzo; Ciammella, Fabio (2020)
The paper analyses health and public health representation within RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana) programmes in the shift from neo-television to post-television. To this purpose, it presents the result of a qualitative media content analysis on three different RAI programmes, attributable to different television genres and aired in the two periods considered. The analysis shows that in the shift from neo-television to post-television a recurrent genre arose which we call healthentainment: evolving from health representation to health storytelling, this genre integrates varied expert knowledge with new topics and new means of public involvement; flexible regarding information content, it is however firmly science-based.
Just Say No: Dr Richard I. Evans Efforts to Influence Juvenile Behaviour through US Public Health Programming
Vinson, Emily (2020)
Television as a means of distributing public health information and influencing health behaviours was recognized even in the earliest days of broadcasting, a natural extension of health messaging on radio and film. This paper examines the place health-focused programming held in the United States’ educational television landscape and the role of Dr Richard I. Evans, social-psychology researcher, who sought to use television to influence the behaviours of youths engaging in “risky” activities.
Television at the Crossroads of the History of Consumption and Health: The Morhange Talc Affair (1972-1981)
Coulomb, Benjamin (2020)
The Morhange talc affair was mediatised by television from 1972. The health scandal brought to light issues of consumerism and cosmetic products in France, after baby talcum powder was accidentally contaminated with hexachlorophene. This article presents a diachronic study of the television coverage between 1972 and 1981. Indeed, the coverage and the development of the scandal is taken as a case study in the role and influence that television can have on current affairs.
Television, an Instrument for and a Mirror of Health and Health Services
Close-Koenig, Tricia; Saward, Angela; Borge, Jessica (2020)
This thematic issue of VIEW brings together articles that show how television has been an instrument for, as well as a mirror of, public service and specifically health services. Two approaches to this are featured and teased out. The first approach concerns health communication and campaigns, where information is diffused via television and strengthened or reinforced by visual and filmic means. The second concerns the structures that offer, manage and model norms of health and healthcare services. In introducing elements of the history of health, we hope to draw attention to the intersection of public health and television over the twentieth century, such that thinking about the relationship between them might change our understanding of both.
Television, Teenagers and VD: An Insight into the Advisory Process behind Schools and Colleges’ Broadcasting in the Early 1970s in the UK
Saward, Angela (2020)
This article looks at the forgotten history of a television programme on venereal disease for teenagers broadcast in the United Kingdom (excluding Scotland) in 1973. It was produced by BBC Schools and Colleges and deemed to be very successful. The production was one of a trio of programmes entitled ‘Health Hazards’, from the series TWENTIETH CENTURY FOCUS, which reflected issues relevant to teenagers over a period of social change from the 1960s to the 1970s. The archive record is lean on schools programming and this programme is very well documented from concept to delivery, representing a discrete, but ephemeral, intervention into 1970s sex educational broadcasting. This research contributes something new about public health and sexual education in the period immediately before AIDS.
“Fighting the Uncertainty of Tomorrow”: Explaining and Portraying the Social Security System on French Television for Schools
Bonah, Christian; Danet, Joël (2020)
This contribution analyses in detail a series of instructional television programmes for schools produced between the 1950s and the 1980s on national health insurance and the French social welfare system (known as Sécurité sociale). We consider the televisualization of health issues from two alternative perspectives: school television as a type of public health service and access as a matter of social welfare and public health. We investigate how these television programmes, which focus closely on social welfare administration, sought both to educate captive school audiences as future citizens and to shape and form their attitudes towards it.
“Very Nearly an Armful!”: British Post-War Comedy and the NHS
Melia, Matt (2020)
While much has been written on post war British film and television comedy, there has been no critical focus on one of its key sub-genres – the medical comedy. This article aims to fill (at least some) of the gap in this scholarship. It chooses to focus on how several key medical comedies engaged the politics and ideological tensions of the fledgling National Health Service from the late 1950s to the 1980s. It will focus on the microcosmic representation of medical architectures and environments and consider how they provide spaces for political and ideological debate.

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