Informing or Exploiting? Public Reponses to Giuliana Rancic’s Health Narrative

ABSTRACT

Popular entertainment journalist Giuliana Rancic has shared her struggles with pregnancy loss, infertility, and breast cancer in an array of public forums. In this study, we analyzed online comments responding to public discourses surrounding Rancic’s revelations, including her miscarriage and fertility treatments, her breast cancer diagnosis, and her decision to undergo a double mastectomy. Our goal was to explore how the public framed Rancic’s health challenges. Using a narrative lens, we argue that online comments reveal the tensions that celebrities like Rancic must manage as they contend with public scrutiny of their stories. Online commenters in this study framed Rancic’s narrative as a privileged vantage point in which she exploited her health struggles for personal and financial gain. Our analysis of these comments also demonstrates how Rancic’s narrative exists in concert with other discourses that challenge and disrupt her own account of events. The examination of these mediated discourses has implications for understanding the role of celebrity experiences in personal and public conversations about health.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the reviewers and Dr. Heather Zoller for their feedback, and Kathy Spicciati for her editorial support. We are also indebted to Brittany Pailthrope, Chelsea Wilde, and Jade Myers at UNC Charlotte for their assistance with data collection.

Notes

¹ The total number of comments does not reflect the total number of individuals who posted comments. In some cases, the same person posted multiple comments.

² Because of space constraints, we cite only the texts quoted or referenced in the essay. A complete list of all discourse analyzed is available from the authors upon request.

³ The second author spoke with Giuliana briefly during a book-signing event and mentioned our study to her. After the event, we reached out to Giuliana’s publicist in the hopes that we might interview Giuliana for our study, but we did not get a response. The research team has had no further contact with the star or her publicist.

⁴ We have quoted reader comments directly, leaving typos, formatting, and grammatical errors intact whenever possible. However, we modified a few comments for the sake of readability.

⁵ Elizabeth Edwards, wife of politician John Edwards, also underwent fertility treatments and eventually died from cancer.