Medicine and the Media
Course Unit Code
UCIL20712 (10 credits)
UCIL20722 (20 credits)
Course Unit Details
- Level 2
- Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine
Overview
This unit considers how the media shapes and is shaped by our understandings and experiences of medical science, health professionals, and illness.
Through engagement with both historical and contemporary issues, we explore how English-language media from across the globe has imagined, understood, and represented bodies, medicine, health, and diseases in factual, fictional, and social media.
Our guiding questions for this unit are:
1) How have changing media environments shaped how we talk about and experience our own bodies, health, disease and medicine?
2) How can we contribute to making those media environments better?
To address these questions, we look at a wide variety of media, including journalism, documentary, fictional film and tv, literature, drama, the visual arts, games, user-generated content, social networks and more.
This unit is aimed at students from the humanities, social science, and STEM fields who want to explore how the media represents medical and health issues and consider how these representations impact our lives. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to understanding this wealth of media, we draw on scholarship and approaches from history, media studies, science and health communication, the visual and literary arts, sociology, anthropology, and health psychology and support students in using these frameworks to better understand medicine and health.
Aims
The unit aims to:
- Introduce students to the ways in which factual, fictional, and social media shape our contemporary understandings of and attitudes to medicine and health issues.
- Give students tools to understand how medicine, health, and health care gain and lose authority through the media, how media representations may shape health behaviour, and how lay people and experts engage with and make sense of medical information all of which are critical for engaging with new and old media in a post-pandemic world.
- Introduce students to research and conceptual frameworks from the wide variety of disciplines and expertise. These include history, media studies, science and health communication, the visual and literary arts, sociology, anthropology, and health psychology. Teaching supports them in using these frameworks to better understand contemporary health and medicine issues.
- Encourage students to think critically, creatively, and professionally about how to use media to respond to complex contemporary health and medical challenges.
Learning Outcomes
On completion of the unit, students should be able to:
Knowledge and Understanding:
- Identify and explain how medicine and health are represented in a range of contemporary factual, fictional, and social media products.
- Recognise the historical roots and sociocultural factors that underpin these representations.
Additionally, 20 Credit students will be able to:
- Apply theoretical concepts and practical approaches from relevant academic disciplines to critically evaluate a piece of media in an academic essay.
Intellectual Skills:
- Critically analyse a variety of media, including textual, visual, filmic, and audio products.
- Apply concepts from multiple scholarly disciplines to support critical analysis of media.
- Critique and challenge harmful, unethical, and misleading media representations of medicine and health.
Practical Skills:
- Demonstrate oral and written communication skills through seminar contributions and coursework.
- Design and create their own media product related to a medicine or health issue.
Transferable Skills and Personal Qualities:
- Apply subject knowledge in everyday situations to engage critically with contemporary issues involving health and medicine.
- Identify and challenge misinformation and disinformation in legacy and new media.
Syllabus
Sessions will vary from year to year as this course responds to the changing contemporary landscape of health and medicine; the following is an indicative list of topics.
- Why do media representations matter?
- Why do some people think COVID-19 was caused by 5g towers? Social media, misinformation, and health conspiracies
- What does it mean to be 'at risk'? Media narratives about statistics that shape our understanding of health and disease
- Why is 'everyone' on Ozempic now? How we think about our bodies in and through the media
- Inspiration or trauma porn? Disability stories and identities in the media
- Dreamy doctors and sadistic surgeons: Media, medical authority and professional identities
- Illness, wellness, and what lies between: Media representations of ill-health, identity, and stigma
- Who is responsible for the public's health? Portraying health care systems and their problems
- Is it over yet? How the media frames our discussions about pandemics and other health threats
- AI and robot doctors: Imagining and making healthcare futures
Assessment
10 Credits:
- 1500-word proposal for a media product essay (50%)
- 1000-word (or equivalent) media product creation (50%)
20 Credits:
- 1500-word proposal for a media product essay (30%)
- 1000-word (or equivalent) media product creation (30%)
- 2000-word critical essay (40%)
Eligibility
UCIL units are designed to be accessible to undergraduate students from all disciplines.
UCIL units are credit-bearing and it is not possible to audit UCIL units or take them for additional/extra credits. You must enrol following the standard procedure for your School when adding units outside of your home School.
If you are not sure if you are able to enrol on UCIL units you should contact your School Undergraduate office. You may wish to contact your programme director if your programme does not currently allow you to take a UCIL unit.
You can also contact the UCIL office if you have any questions.
Teaching Staff
Dr Harriet Palfreyman
Dr Elizabeth Toon
Teaching and Learning Methods
- 12 x 1-hour lectures
- 12 x 1-hour seminars
Students taking the 20-credit version will also have consultation sessions with course leaders to prepare for their coursework assessment.
