1. (De)constructing Health News An analysis of the lifecycle of elderly-related health news stories through multi-sited, linguistic ethnographic research Jana Declercq Ghent University Interdisciplinary Discourse Studies workshop, Aalborg University 24-26/08/2015

2. Outline The entire project: ▫Research group structure ▫General background: why elderly-related health news? ▫Research design My PhD: ▫Research questions ▫Method ▫Challenges

3. (De)Constructing Health News A transdisciplinary investigation: Communication studies Journalism studies Linguistics Sociology Medicine  Health, Media & Society (www.healthmediasociety.net)

4. (De)Constructing Health News Team: 6 Supervisors 1 postdoc researcher 4 PhD researchers

5. Why health? Why news? Why the elderly?

6. Four Societal Evolutions Increasing health care costs Ageing of the population Medicalization Healthism

7. Health & Elderly: 4 Societal Evolutions Increasing health care costs Ageing of the population Medicalization Healthism  Why media-central perspective?

8. Medical Journalism “All this information not only influences awareness, attitudes, and intentions but may also contribute to changes in behavior, health care utilization, clinical practices, and health policies.” (Levi 2001: 4)

9. Research Design STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS Sociology STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS Sociology NEWS STORY LIFECYCLE ANALYSIS Linguistics NEWS STORY LIFECYCLE ANALYSIS Linguistics NEWS OUTPUT: CONTENT, FRAMES, DISCOURSES Journalism Studies NEWS OUTPUT: CONTENT, FRAMES, DISCOURSES Journalism Studies AUDIENCE RESEARCH Communication studies AUDIENCE RESEARCH Communication studies

10. My PhD What are the production processes and practices underlying the construction of elderly-related health news at different stakeholders? How do media and other stakeholders interact, and which changes do news stories undergo while travelling back and forth between them?

11. My PhD Method: ▫Multi-sited, case-oriented, linguistic ethnography Sites: ▫Newspaper ▫Monthly magazine targeting people over 50 ▫Pharmaceutical company ▫Health insurance agency

12. Linguistic Ethnography Ethnography? Origins in anthropology ≠ fieldwork, method of data collection = paradigm “Reality in its kaleidoscopic, complex, complicated nature” (Blommaert 2006: 14) “Capacity of challenging established views” (Blommaert 2006: 13)

13. Linguistic Ethnography Language and the (social) world are mutually shaping (Rampton 2007) We need to: ▫study language and talk in interaction to understand the context, ▫and study the context to understand the language Materiality  Focus on discursive data

14. Linguistic ethnography “An open and exploratory, even experimental platform” (Blommaert 2007: 683) Very data-driven (Agar 1996) Combining different kinds of: ▫Data ▫Frameworks ▫Methods and units of analysis Role of the researcher

15. Challenges Unpredictable data Access to elite settings Ethics & anonymization Possibly distorting presence of the researcher Openness of the platform: linguistic/philosophical theoretical grounding Transdisciplinarity! ▫Combining frameworks/methods/… in my PhD ▫Combining insights from four different PhDs

16. Theo Van Leeuwen (2005:8) ‘The idea of discipline is in effect narrowed down to “skill”- to the analytical and interpretative skills that can contribute in specific ways to integrated projects. In such a context I no longer say, for instance, “I am a linguist”, setting myself apart from other researchers, but, “I know how to do cetain types of linguistic research and can therefore make a specific and useful contribution to interdisciplinary research projects.’

17. Thank you for listening!