Media panic, medical discourse and the smartphone
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Lian Malai Madsen
Abstract
This article investigates a space of upset related to the smartphone with its communicative affordances and implications. The notion of moral panic can be seen as a way of conceptualizing spaces of upset and their discursive frames. Informed by this concept and accounts of the panic discourses particularly directed at media, I examine the upset articulated in Danish media panic discourses, which grants authority from a medical perspective. In addition, I draw on the concept of medicalization and discuss how it becomes sayable within the space of upset related to digitally mediated communication that human interaction through a technological device is not (always) communication, but habit or addiction, to unpack the socio-cultural and sociolinguistic assumptions and implications of this perspective. Empirically, the article focuses on a particularly preeminent voice in the public debate in Denmark about the impact of social media and smartphone use, namely the voice of a medical doctor who has been granted the authority as “digital health expert” and frequently appears in Danish print, broadcast and social media.
Funding source: Det Frie Forskningsråd
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© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: spaces of upset in the Nordic region
- Chaos in court: mediatized expressions of upset in relation to Danish courtroom interpreting
- Broadcasting the skeptron: the upset of sociolinguistic closure in Swedish public service television
- “We just want the language tone”: when requests to use minority languages lead to interactional breakdown in multilingual classrooms
- Language for work and work for language: linguistic aspirations in the marketing of domestic work
- Media panic, medical discourse and the smartphone
- Sociolinguistic upsets and people of color in social media performances
- Nordicity, language and the nation-state
- Varia
- Foreign language ideology and American Sign Language in US public education
- Making the case for linguicism: revisiting theoretical concepts and terminologies in linguistic discrimination research
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: spaces of upset in the Nordic region
- Chaos in court: mediatized expressions of upset in relation to Danish courtroom interpreting
- Broadcasting the skeptron: the upset of sociolinguistic closure in Swedish public service television
- “We just want the language tone”: when requests to use minority languages lead to interactional breakdown in multilingual classrooms
- Language for work and work for language: linguistic aspirations in the marketing of domestic work
- Media panic, medical discourse and the smartphone
- Sociolinguistic upsets and people of color in social media performances
- Nordicity, language and the nation-state
- Varia
- Foreign language ideology and American Sign Language in US public education
- Making the case for linguicism: revisiting theoretical concepts and terminologies in linguistic discrimination research
