‘We want to deliver good talent’: investigating the media-related practices of Australian mental health organisations

ABSTRACT

This article explores the media-related practices of Australian mental health organisations by drawing upon interviews with people whose role was either the CEO, Director, or communications and media manager of the organisation. The findings suggest that organisations have become increasingly sophisticated in their media and communication activities. Participants discussed practices such as packaging stories to accommodate news values and journalists’ routines, strategically using digital and social media, providing media training, and facilitating contact between journalists and people with lived experience. Participants also identified challenges, including a tension between being in the media for the purposes of advancing advocacy objectives and for branding the organisation. The analysis is informed by research into the mediatisation of organisations, journalists’ experiences reporting on mental health issues and Mad Studies scholarship, which provides a critical lens through which to think about the practices of organisations, journalists and other actors in the mental health field.

KEYWORDS:

• Journalism
• media
• mediatisation
• mental health
• organisations
• interviews

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I am mindful of the large body of literature on organisational communication that I do not engage directly in this article, choosing to draw instead on the work of scholars who have focused specifically on the mediatisation of organisations. I would, however, like to thank one of the reviewers for pointing to the interconnections between the mediatisation of organisations and ideas pursued by organisational communication scholars who focus on external organisational communication and the communication functions of advertising, marketing and public relations (see, for example, Cheney & Christensen, 2001). This may suggest an area for further interdisciplinary collaboration.

2. The label of ‘consumer’ is that which is most commonly used in Australia to refer to people with lived experience of mental distress and thus it is the term I use in this article. But it is not without its critics and it is important to note that terms such as service user, survivor and patient are used in other countries and contexts, signalling the range of ways people choose to identify themselves or are identified by policymakers and service providers.

3. As indicated, the data reported in this article is part of a larger project that involved interviews with 83 people, including journalists (9), consumers (34), mental health professionals and researchers (8), general community members (23) and mental health organisations (9). Findings of some of these interviews have been reported elsewhere (see Holland, 2018a, 2018b, 2017b). I acknowledge that some time has elapsed between the collection and reporting of this data and that this could be seen as a limitation of the study in light of the constantly evolving media environment in which organisations operate. However, I believe the findings continue to be relevant and useful for scholars interested in interactions between the media and mental health fields and provide a basis upon which further research in this area can build.

4. I contacted Beyond Blue inviting them to participate in this research in 2015 when the fieldwork was being conducted. The last correspondence I had from a member of their communications and media team was that one of their colleagues would contact me but this did not eventuate.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award [DE140100100].

Notes on contributors

Kate Holland

Kate Holland is a Senior Research Fellow in the News and Media Research Centre, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra. Her research focuses on different contexts and dimensions of health communication, including media representations, journalistic practices, and the communication practices of health organisations, academics, activists and people with lived experience. She has published research on mental health issues, suicide, overweight and obesity, and violence against women.