Washer, P;
(2007)
Social Representations of Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
Since the 1990s a new biomedical discourse has developed around ‘emerging infectious diseases’ (EID). This category is associated with an increased interest in the subject of infectious diseases in scientific and lay spheres. Some of the media scares prompted by individual diseases such as Ebola and AIDS have been the subject of social scientific research. However, there is less focus in the social scientific literature on the media coverage of these epidemics as part of this wider EID discourse. Risk is an important topic in contemporary social science, although theoretical work on risk rarely focuses on the risk posed by epidemics of infectious disease. This thesis thus makes two contributions: It places three empirical studies of the media representations of recent epidemics of emerging infectious diseases in the context of the theoretical risk literature. Secondly, using Social Representations Theory, it will examine how these epidemics were described in the media, who or what was said to be at risk from them, and who was blamed for them. Newspaper reports from British national newspapers were downloaded from the Lexis-Nexis internet news service and analysed using qualitative research software. In the first case study, the 2003 SARS epidemic, similar blaming mechanisms were described as in previous studies of epidemics of infectious disease, namely that the threat was distanced by blaming the other. The subsequent case studies, ‘mad cow disease’ and the ‘hospital superbug’ MRSA demonstrated different patterns of blame: where the threat could not be externalised in the same way, the blame was laid at the door of ‘our leaders’, as was blame for squandering or misuse of modern technology. This thesis points to how the social representations of emerging infectious diseases ‘map onto’ existing ideas about health and disease that circulate in the culture, as well as forming a focus for wider societal concerns.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Title: | Social Representations of Emerging Infectious Diseases |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Thesis digitised by ProQuest. Third party copyright material has been removed from the ethesis. Images identifying individuals have been redacted or partially redacted to protect their identity. |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/173509 |
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