The Construction of the Health Consumer: Discourse, Reality and the New Media

The aim of this paper is to discuss the impact the healthism discourse being transmitted through new media has on creating social reality in the construction of the health consumer. Because of consumption culture, health as one of the most important elements of humanity has been turned into a marketable object. Capitalism’s interest in consumption began with the perception that the continuity of the capitalist economic system could not be achieved through production alone. As a result of capitalism’s control and regulation of consumption areas, the phenomenon of health has become an object and begun being marketed. Perceiving some changes specific to the natural biological stages of human life as diseases or having interest groups introduce some natural functions of the human body to society as diseases within the framework of a culture of fear have further exacerbated this problem. In addition, capitalism is seen to have internalized the problems the crowded, urbanized, and industrialized world has brought, as well as the diseases that have been caused by depriving large masses from opportunities such as natural food and clean air, and to have transformed these into new marketable objects to serve its own interests. In this respect, the construction of the health consumer became important in the 20th century, a process that has continued with the expansion of the healthcare market in the 21st century. This expansion has largely occurred thanks to new media. The new media uses the phenomenon of health to attract attention, create a sensation, sell products, fill the agenda, gain commercial profit, and nourish and adopt consumerism and consumption culture. In this respect, health consumers are persuaded by the discourses spread from new media. Capitalism uses the discourse of being healthy to manage all these processes. These discourses serve to create a new social reality and societies obsessed with health.