#GeordieHospital: more than a TV show and tweets to reflect on the complexities of public health communication today
I have in recent weeks been preparing for a study about Channel4's television series Geordie Hospital, which was on air last year and triggered a wave of activity on Twitter with the #GeordieHospital hashtag (#GH). #GH was filmed in NHS hospitals in the UK and widely tweeted as the country was recovering a modicum of normality after the Covid-19 lockdowns. This illustrates the importance that communication has for healthcare providers and arguably for everyone who is a stakeholder in public health outcomes today. Channel 4's TV series was filmed in hospitals in Newcastle upon Tyne GH is valuable to explore processes of biomedicalization, described by Briggs and Hallin as 'the greater interpenetration of biomedicine into other social structures, such as industry, the state, and the mass media'. Why study a medical show and its tweets? Big concepts such as biomedicalization don't readily convey the importance of researching medical television shows and