Houston, Ella (2023) Sad Cases and Success Stories: Representations of Multiple Sclerosis in Direct-to-Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising. Societies, 13 (7). ISSN 2075-4698
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Abstract
This article examines representations of multiple sclerosis in direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertisements televised during 2021 in the United States. Drawing on and developing Cultural Disability Studies theory, it highlights how advertising produced by pharmaceutical companies influences mass understandings, as well as personal experiences of, multiple sclerosis. The application of textual analysis to a small-sample of direct-to-consumer advertisements that promote drug therapies for multiple sclerosis (n. 4) uncovers the prevalence of profit-driven, rather than per-son-driven, medical neoliberal ideologies. On first impressions, the advertisements appear to challenge the metanarrative of multiple sclerosis as a life-limiting tragedy. However, the research findings reveal that multiple sclerosis is framed as the “hidden enemy” of the American dream, supposedly threatening individuals’ abilities to live productive and meaningful lives, while the consumption of pharmaceutical “wonder” drugs is treated as an act of self-empowerment.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information and Comments: | Copyright: © 2023 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). |
| Keywords: | multiple sclerosis; direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertising; metanarratives; representations; Cultural Disability Studies; popular culture; neoliberalism; medical neoliberalism |
| Faculty / Department: | Faculty of Education and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences |
| Depositing User: | Ella Houston |
| Date Deposited: | 04 Jul 2023 12:50 |
| Last Modified: | 04 Jul 2023 12:50 |
| URI: | https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/3980 |
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