Negotiating Responsibility: Media Representations of Prescription Stimulants in Australian Newspapers (2013–2022)

This article examines the ideological framing of prescription stimulant (PS) use in Australian print media over a 10-year period (2013–2022), focusing on how newspapers construct narratives around medical legitimacy, cognitive enhancement, and deviance. Drawing on 122 articles from eight of the country's most widely circulated newspapers, the analysis engages the theoretical frameworks of medicalization, pharmaceuticalization, and biopower. The analysis reveals an ideological divide in media portrayals: right-leaning newspapers emphasize overprescription, individual responsibility for PS use and its consequences, and the deviant potential of PS use, while left-leaning outlets highlight social and cultural mechanisms underlying PS use and barriers to medication access. Over time, the discourse shifts from alarm over overprescription to concerns about underdiagnosis and medication scarcity, particularly in the context of ADHD treatment. Special attention is paid to the symbolic role of specific drugs—Ritalin and Modafinil—in constructing broader narratives of performance, normalcy, and self-governance. Findings also show how media narratives sort users into categories of innocence or deviance, frame adult use through agency and moral responsibility, and operate as technologies of governance that reinforce neoliberal ideals of self-regulation and optimization. By examining how PS are represented as tools of both enhancement and control, this study contributes to a critical understanding of the ways media mediate sociopolitical anxieties around pharmaceutical use. These findings are interpreted as underscoring the media's role in negotiating the boundaries between health, deviance, and productivity in a neoliberal era.