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Stories About Risk: Media Narratives of Known, Emerging, and Novel Health Threats

Media and Law: Between Free Speech and Censorship

ISBN: 978-1-80071-730-5, eISBN: 978-1-80071-729-9

Publication date: 23 April 2021

Abstract

Purpose – The authors examine framing and narrativization in news coverage of health threats to assess variations in news discourse for known, emerging and novel health risks. Methodology/Approach – Using the analytical categories of known, emerging, and novel risks the authors discuss media analyses of anti-vaccination, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and Covid-19. Findings – Known risks are framed within a biomedical discourse in which scientific evidence underpins public health guidelines, and following these directives prevent risk exposure while non-compliance is characterized as immoral and risky. News coverage of emerging risks highlights public health guidelines but fails to convey their importance as the risks seem too distant or abstract. Media coverage of novel risks is characterized by the ubiquity of uncertainty, which emerges as a “master frame” under which all incidents and events are subsumed. Stories about novel risks highlight the fluid and changing nature of scientific knowledge, which has the unintended effect of fueling uncertainty as studies and experts contradict each other. Originality/Value – This chapter introduces a new analytical framework for examining how media stories represent public health risks, along with previously unpublished analysis of media coverage about AMR and Covid-19. This chapter provides insight about the nature of risk discourses involving media, public health officials, activists, and citizens.

Keywords

Citation

Capurro, G. and Greenberg, J. (2021), "Stories About Risk: Media Narratives of Known, Emerging, and Novel Health Threats", Deflem, M. and Silva, D.M.D. (Ed.) Media and Law: Between Free Speech and Censorship (Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, Vol. 26), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 43-59. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1521-613620210000026004

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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