The social construction of naturopathic medicine in Canadian newspapers

Abstract

This article uses the social construction of target populations (SCTP) approach to examine the social construction of naturopathic medicine in the Canadian media at a time of policy change. It uses an original dataset of newspaper articles during a period (2013–2017) that involved increased scrutiny about naturopathic medicine due to a high-profile criminal trial. It finds that naturopathic medicine was far more likely to be portrayed negatively than positively, and that the trial increased the frequency of negative stories of the profession. This demonstrates that naturopathic medicine has not been able to withstand a negative social construction in Canada in spite of concrete public policy gains in many provinces. It further demonstrates the need for scholars using the SCTP approach to emphasize the role of the media in influencing target populations’ social constructions.

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