Dialogue and Dissemination: The Social Practices of Medical Illustrators in the Pharmaceutical Context
Date
2013-09-13
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Abstract
This dissertation investigates the social practices of North American medical illustrators in the creation of images for their pharmaceutical sponsors. It tells a contemporary story of the relational attributes that support these visual science messages, using theories of social practice and research on communities of practice. Ethnographic interviews conducted with 28 medical illustrators reveal that visual accuracy is the result of a process of negotiation influenced by transitioning community interests. Medical illustrators face increased complexity in the communities of practice responsible to professional representations of science bridging research science, marketing, regulatory, legal, and health advertising interests. Medical illustrators invoke accuracy in challenging negotiations through relationships with beauty, technology and science story, in order to engage in traditional dialogues with medical science practitioners despite a commercial pharmaceutical context of dissemination. The accuracy of images is not a singular, uncomplicated entity, but a fertile area of active creation, a social construction through negotiated meaning. Medical illustrators transition to working contexts that allow them to engage in production processes that bridge dialogue and dissemination, in smaller biotech companies, not-for-profit educational contexts, or their own research science studies. This research contributes to the disparate literatures of medical illustration, practice theory, the social studies of scientific imaging and visualization, and visual culture where the material world is a complex socio-material space.
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Mass Communications, Organizational, Education
Citation
Brierley, M. (2013). Dialogue and Dissemination: The Social Practices of Medical Illustrators in the Pharmaceutical Context (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/25701