Diagnostic Narratives: Creating Visions of Austrian Society in Print Media Accounts of Obesity

This study explores how Austrian newspapers and magazines report on the obesity epidemic. We show how the media provide a space for formulating situated diagnostic narratives, that is, accounts that develop both a diagnosis of society through the lens of a health phenomenon and a definition of the phenomenon itself. Nourished by globally circulating discourses, these narratives are articulated in a national context and are enmeshed in biopolitical struggles. Linking a diagnosis of society to the biomedical sphere grants authority to diagnostic narratives and creates a space in which otherwise contestable moral calls to return to traditional orders can be articulated.