Ethical Implications of Visual Framing in Mediated Health Communication From a Reception Perspective

• In Event: Ethical Perspectives on Visual Framing

Abstract

Ethical issues are particularly important in health communication as it “brings special concerns related to life and death, mental and physical well-being that are rarely relevant in other communicative contexts” (Guttman & Thompson, 2011, p. 293). While mediated communication on health topics is rapidly growing, its ethical implications are nevertheless hardly reflected. This holds particularly true for the visual framing of health issues, e.g. in campaigns that are intended to initiate a change of health-related behavior, where benevolence is often taken for granted and outweighs a critical ethical discussion (Guttman & Thompson, 2011), but also in the portrayal of patients in mass media that has already been shown to include many stigmatizing depictions (such as in the context of obesity; Atanasova, Gunter & Koteyko, 2013; Heuer, McClure & Puhl, 2011).
Since the specifics of visual communication suggest that visually framed messages may be particularly unobtrusive in communicating ethically doubtful messages (Abraham & Appiah, 2006; Messaris & Abraham, 2001), it becomes especially relevant to address ethical implications of visual framing from a reception perspective. This is also standing to reason as conceptualizations of ethics in health communication usually put a focus on the rights of patients and concerned persons (Guttman & Thompson, 2011). In this, we can differentiate ethical implications of visually framed health communication with regard to 1) highly involved people such as patients who use mediated health information in the process of informed decision making and therefore require ethically uncritical information, and 2) members of the general public whose attitudes towards the first group and towards medical issues such as specific treatments may be influenced by ethically doubtful mediated depictions (Puhl, Luedicke & Heuer, 2012).
This paper therefore discusses ethical implications of visually framed health communication from a reception perspective by relating empirical findings on the visual framing of health issues to theoretical insights of visual framing effects and normative principles of health communication (Beauchamp & Childress, 1994). It differentiates 1) explicit ethical implications that recipients can rationally and directly address during or after reception (such as aspects to decide whether a picture portrays a health-related issue in a way that adheres to ethical norms), and 2) implicit ethical implications that relate to a subconscious level of reception (such as stigmatizing effects). Potential consequences of these implications for different groups of recipients are reflected.

Author

• Michael Grimm, Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research