Medical Journalism in Women’s Magazine: The Case of Cosmopolitan

Abstract

Health is a most common topic discussed in women magazine ranking from fashion to beauty, sexuality to art and culture. Biological health, mental health, fertility and sexual health are the most common topics which are given wide coverage. Whether this news, having quantitatively audience, is qualitatively health news is the primarily problem. The most of the news deals with particular subject such as medical selling, aesthetic advertisement and prototypes imposed on popular life. A large number of news reaching the audience read for health purposes cannot go beyond triggering the consumption culture. That is the starting point of this study. The study limited to 52 issues of Cosmopolitan Turkey published between June 2014- September 2018 analyses Dr. Cosmo, which falls into the health news category. In this study, content analysis is used to examine to what extent the news qualitatively and quantitatively contributes to medicine journalism. At the end of the study, it is found that the most of the health news is published on the purposes of commercial concerns, consolidates aesthetic perception and generally stuck between certain topics.