Health is an organising principle of contemporary neoliberal citizenship, particularly evident in the political rhetoric of individual responsibility articulated around the privatisation of public health and welfare systems. The popular culture of these political technologies is expressed via the discourses of self-help and self-care, exemplified by the commercial success of consumer health magazines, and the responsibilising strategies of public health interventions. This thesis investigates the contemporary function of health magazines by examining both the content and the context of reader letters published between 1997 and 2000 in six Sydney-based 'commercial' and 'community' publications, and incorporating interviews with magazine editors. The three commercial magazines address the health media 'publics' of women (Good Medicine), men (Men's Health) and alternative health consumers (Nature & Health), whereas the three community publications address the 'counterpublics' of people living with HIV/AIDS (Talkabout), sex workers (The Professional) and illicit drug users (User's News). Despite their different social contexts, these six magazines are all exemplary of the advanced liberal health imperatives of Australian popular culture, although the community magazines also empower audiences to facilitate social change. Reader letters are approached via the interpretive lens of cultural studies, in which the specific local characteristics of each text is seen to have wider global implications. Each magazine's letters are positioned within a complex cultural, political and economic context that includes the rise of consumer culture, the social function of narrative disclosures, the increased validation of exhibitionism and the gendered politics of health and medicine. This research advocates for interdisciplinary dialogue between media/cultural studies, health/medical sociology and political theory, suggesting that health magazine reader letters can help to identify the role of popular and alternative media in constructing ideals of 'citizenships' within advanced liberalism.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/187852 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Newman, Christy Elizabeth, National Centre in HIV Social Research & School of Media & Communications, UNSW |
| Publisher | Awarded by:University of New South Wales. National Centre in HIV Social Research and School of Media and Communications |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Christy Elizabeth Newman, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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