OBESITY, EATING DISORDERS, AND THE MEDIA: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY WORKSHOP
Wednesday 9 November 2011, 9:30am – 5:30pm
St Anne’s College, University of Oxford
The rising global prevalence of obesity and eating disorders can be
considered one of the top public health challenges of the 21st century.
With the large volume of recent scientific research on these conditions,
and the increasing number of public health policies directed at their
prevention, significant new information concerning obesity and eating
disorders is emerging with great frequency. Only a small selection of
this new information, however, crosses from the science and policy
realms into the public sphere. Here, the news media play a crucial role.
Lay concepts regarding the prevention, causation, and management of
obesity and eating disorders are now largely informed by news media
sources, where health information is communicated to the public with
ever-growing immediacy, accessibility, and ubiquity.
Considering the news media’s potential influence on people’s health
behaviours and lifestyle choices, the Unit for Biocultural Variation and
Obesity is exploring the rationale and modes of representation guiding
the media’s reporting on obesity and eating disorders. This workshop
aims to establish the state of the science and define best practices in
utilizing digital methods to research the news media. Bringing together
leading experts on obesity, eating disorders, and media studies from the
UK, the US, Israel, and Australia, this workshop is the first to offer a
comprehensive examination of the media’s representations of obesity and
eating disorders, as well as the first to explore the application of new
digital humanities research methods to this field. It promises to
engender innovative and collaborative research, and produce substantial
new analyses of the media’s role in bridging science and the public.
Conveners
Professor Stanley Ulijaszek, Dr Karin Eli, Professor David Zeitlyn
(School of Anthropology, University of Oxford)
Speakers include
Professor Clive Seale (Queen Mary, University of London)
Ms Anna Lavis (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Dr Paula Saukko (Loughborough University)
Dr Helen Malson (University of the West of England)
Dr Megan Warin (University of Adelaide, Australia)
Dr Natalie Boero (San Jose State University, USA)
Mr John McNaught (National Centre for Text Mining [NaCTeM], Manchester)
Ms Vivienne Parry, OBE (Science writer and broadcaster)
Dr Daphna Carmeli (University of Haifa, Israel)
Dr James Thomas (Institute of Education, University of London)
To register, please visit http://tinyurl.com/UBVOworkshopNOV11
