Cancer, Heart Disease, and AIDS: What Do The Media Tell Us About These Diseases?

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Abstract
Understandings that societies have about illnesses have social ramifications that extend beyond the physiological conditions alone. Cancer and heart disease are major causes of death in North America. AIDS, a new disease, is an epidemic with great lethal potentiality. All three diseases are experienced directly or indirectly by most of the population of North America. In a mass society, one significant source of information about disease, its nature, causes, and treatment is the mass media. This article examines select North American mass media – namely, Time, Newsweek, Maclean's, Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, and Reader's Digest – in 1961-1965 and 1980-1985 to compare the images of cancer, heart disease, and AIDS.

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