Course: Media, Health and Society (MKVN09)

15 credits

What is health? What is illness? What can we learn from TV-shows like the Biggest looser or docudramas such as the ER?

Why do some medical conditions gain a lot of media attention while others are hardly mentioned? In this course we explore how media represents health, risks and medical conditions, and the consequences thereof. The media are strategic tools for health politicians, health professionals, and other opinion makers, including health consumers and various patient groups. What role do traditional mass media and new transnational digital media play in people’s comprehension of health, their own health decisions, as well as in social change processes?

Media, Health and Society is a course set out to explore the relationship between media, health and medicine from a producer, content and audience perspective. The course brings together Media and Communication Studies with Sociology of Health and Illness, and Public Health, which makes it useful for students from different backgrounds and disciplines. The course is structured around several themes that will be elaborated and critically analyzed, e.g. experiences of health and illness in different media formats and genres, body and gender, normality and disability, health consumption and lifestyle, public health campaigns, politics and health systems, the medical profession, health and media literacy.

The course includes lectures by the course leaders, lectures by specially invited guests, and student lead lectures and seminars. The course is discussion based and relies on every student’s active engagement in order for them to gain as much new knowledge as possible. The course syllabus will offer students some structure but also flexibility, and great opportunity for individual specialization theoretically, methodologically, and in relation to different health topics.

Contact Information

Helena Sandberg
Associate Professor
Helena.Sandberg@kom.lu.se
+46-46–222 03 29
Room SOL A210

[Translate to English:] Helena Sandberg

Student voices

It’s a lot of fun! Challenging assignments, great topics, strong teacher support and amazing environment.

It opens your eyes to the relation between health and media, which is an incredibly interesting field. It’s also a really fun and engaging course!

The course provides thorough knowledge and theoretical background to a popular subject

The media and health field affects us on a daily basis, this course gives great insights to the topic with interesting lectures and good discussions that gives a lot of different approaches to the field.

I liked that throughout the course there was a lot of examples on how this is used/communicated/treated in our everyday life, so the course felt practical even though there was a lot to read.

The course did a great work and changed some of my perspectives on health issues, I felt supported and motivated to learn!

You just don’t want to miss it! Communicating and learning about health in such a way that you assume the role of both a medical and media practitioner now that is awsome.

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