Barnett’s research examines public health issues, including women and violence and specifically infanticide and rape. She also has conducted research on women’s magazines and their representations of health and aging. A reporter and editorial writer for 11 years, Barnett covered health care issues while working at The Charlotte News. She later worked in health communication at the North Carolina Hospital Association, then as a health/science writer for Family Health International (FHI), a non-profit organization that conducted biomedical and social science research on women’s health, AIDS, and family planning. At FHI, she coordinated the communications plans for the Women’s Studies Project, a multi-country research effort to determine how women felt they had or had not benefited from family planning. During that time, she worked with researchers in the Philippines, Jamaica, Egypt, and Zimbabwe.
Ph.D., University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill – 2003. Dissertation: Medea in the Media: Narrative Analysis of Print Media Coverage of Women Who Kill Their Children.
M.A. – Duke University, 1996.
B.A. – Pembroke State University, 1974.
Barnett, B. (2008). More contradictions: A framing analysis of health, aging, and femininity in a magazine for women over 40. Women, wellness, and media. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars. (Forthcoming anthology).
Barnett, B. (2007). The wounded community: Myth and narrative in print news articles about women who killed their children. Media Report to Women 35(1), 13 – 21.
Barnett, B. (2007). Women Who Defy Nature: Maternal Infanticide and Journalists’ Use of the Myth of Perfection. In K. Hart (Ed.), Media(ted) Deviance and Social “Otherness:” Interrogating Influential Representations. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars.
Barnett, B. (2006). Health as women’s work: A pilot study on how women’s magazines frame health and femininity. Women and Language. 29(2), 1–11.
Barnett, B. (2006). Medea in the media: Narrative and myth in news stories about women who kill their children. Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, 7(4), 411–433.
Barnett, B. (2006). Embracing the imaginary good mother: Narratives of love and violence from women who killed their children. Iowa Journal of Communication, 38(1), 5–26.
Barnett, B. (2005). Artist of obscenity or perfect mother? A narrative analysis of news coverage of the Andrea Yates murders. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 29(1), 9–29.
Barnett, B. (2004). Emma says: A case study of the use of comics for health education among women in the AIDS heartland. Feminist Media Studies, 4 (2), 111–128.
