Valentina Cappi
Department of History, Culture and Civilization, University of Bologna
Keywords:
Television, Medicine, Representation, Care
Abstract
This article examines the representation of care and cure on digital terrestrial television in Italy. It studies a sample of TV listings from two different days of the week, two weeks apart, and analyses the narratives of healthcare depicted in informative and entertainment programming (from Elisir to House M.D., from Medicina 33 to Grey’s Anatomy, from Mystery Diagnosis to Braccialetti Rossi). The aims here are to understand whether care and cure are represented as exclusive or complementary activities within medical practices; which characters are predominantly given technical expertise and which have supporting roles (doctors, nurses, the patients themselves or their family members); and which rhetorical strategies are used in single programmes in order to address the theme of care.
