Outbreak or Epidemic? How Obama’s Language Choice Transformed the Ebola Outbreak Into an Epidemic

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 669-673 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anat Gesser-Edelsburg ◽  
Yaffa Shir-Raz ◽  
Oshrat Sassoni Bar-Lev ◽  
James J. James ◽  
Manfred S. Green

AbstractObjectiveOur aim was to examine in what terms leading newspapers’ online sites described the current Ebola crisis.MethodsWe employed a quantitative content analysis of terms attributed to Ebola. We found and analyzed 582 articles published between March 23 and September 30, 2014, on the online websites of 3 newspapers: The New York Times, Daily Mail, and Ynet. Our theoretical framework drew from the fields of health communication and emerging infectious disease communication, including such concepts as framing media literacy, risk signatures, and mental models.ResultsWe found that outbreak and epidemic were used interchangeably in the articles. From September 16, 2014, onward, epidemic predominated, corresponding to when President Barack Obama explicitly referred to Ebola as an epidemic. Prior to Obama’s speech, 86.8% of the articles (323) used the term outbreak and only 8.6% (32) used the term epidemic. Subsequently, both terms were used almost the same amount: 53.8% of the articles (113) used the term outbreak and 53.3% (112) used the term epidemic.ConclusionsEffective communication is crucial during public health emergencies such as Ebola, because language framing affects the decision-making process of social judgments and actions. The choice of one term (outbreak) over another (epidemic) can create different conceptualizations of the disease, thereby influencing the risk signature. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2016;10:669–673)

Author(s):  
M. Chekunova

The presented article tests the application of the method of quantitative content analysis to identify the spread of confrontational tendencies in the public consciousness. It proves the broad possibilities of monitoring and forecasting conflicts in society on the basis of it. The source base of the study was the archives of the New York Times newspaper for the period from 1851 to 2019. The author calculated the number of used indicative conflict-containing lexemes, the integrated dynamics of which expresses the coefficient of confrontation. The coefficient of confrontation correlates with the dynamics of conflicts in the history of the United States and the world, explanations of the increase and decrease of the corresponding indicators are given. The maximum phases of the confrontation coefficient fall on the period of the Second World War and the modern period. Modern maximization is viewed as a significant threat to the security of Russian society.


2021 ◽  
pp. e1-e3
Author(s):  
R. Tamara Konetzka

Approximately 40% of all COVID-19 deaths in the United States have been linked to long-term care facilities.1 Early in the pandemic, as the scope of the problem became apparent, the nursing home sector generated significant media attention and public alarm. A New York Times article in mid-April referred to nursing homes as “death pits”2 because of the seemingly uncontrollable spread of the virus through these facilities. This devastation continued during subsequent surges,3 but there is a role for policy to change this trajectory. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print January 28, 2021: e1–e3. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2020.306107 )


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-480
Author(s):  
Xiaoqun Zhang

This study assessed the media visibility, a composite measure of attention and prominence, of China’s President Xi Jinping’s first 3-year governance in The New York Times. The assessment was based on the content analysis of 317 news articles focusing on Chinese President. Qualitative content analysis was used to identify three major frames, 12 mid-level frames, and 18 sub-frames. Quantitative content analysis was used to measure the attention, prominence, and the combination of these two parameters of these frames. The findings showed that The New York Times employed multiple frames to report Chinese President, and the two frames with the highest media visibility are (Domestic) Campaigns and Strategies and China-United States (relations), rather than Human Rights.


English Today ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 39-45
Author(s):  
Michael Cop ◽  
Hunter Hatfield

If we believe social media, newspapers, and even some of our best friends and colleagues, the war over standard usage is on. As with many wars, the opposing sides seem to be entrenched in differing ideological positions and many of the battles seem to take place over the most unstable, smallest bits of territory - such as the Oxford comma, singular they, or split infinitives. In this ongoing war, possessive apostrophes have attracted particularly aggressive forays. For example, when some English cities proposed removing apostrophes from street signs, various news outlets published headlines such as, ‘It's a catastrophe for the apostrophe in Britain’ (NBC, 31 January, 2009), ‘Dropped apostrophes spark grammar war in Britain’ (New York Times, 16 March, 2013), and ‘“It's pandering to the lowest common denominator”: Anger as Cambridge bans apostrophe from street names’ (Daily Mail, 18 January, 2014). Explaining Birmingham's ban, one city councillor was not that much less sensational, stating that apostrophes ‘denote possessions that are no longer accurate, and are not needed’ and that ‘they confuse people. If I want to go to a restaurant, I don't want to have an A-level (high school diploma) in English to find it’ (NBC).


2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (13) ◽  
pp. 2457-2467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linnea I Laestadius ◽  
Mark A Caldwell

AbstractObjectiveTo understand current public perceptions of in vitro meat (IVM) in light of its potential to be a more environmentally sustainable alternative to conventional meat.DesignA qualitative content analysis of the comments made on online news articles highlighting the development of IVM and the world’s first IVM hamburger in August 2013.SettingNews article comment sections across seven US-based online news sources (The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Cable News Network and National Public Radio).SubjectsFour hundred and sixty-two commenters who made eight hundred and fourteen publicly available online comments addressing IVM.ResultsKey themes in commenter perceptions of IVM included environmental and public health benefits, but also negative themes such as IVM’s status as an unnatural and unappealing food. Overall, the tone of comments was more negative than positive.ConclusionsFindings suggest that while the environmental and public health motivations for developing and in turn consuming IVM resonate with some segments of the population, others find that reasoning both uncompelling and problematic. Concerns about IVM as an unnatural and risky product also appear to be a significant barrier to public acceptance of IVM. Supporters of IVM may wish to begin to develop a regulatory strategy for IVM to build public trust and explore messaging strategies that cast IVM as a new technology with benefits to individuals rather than primarily a solution to global challenges. Those in the public health nutrition field can make an important contribution to the emerging public discussion about IVM.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-152
Author(s):  
Shahzad Ali ◽  
Ahmer Safwan ◽  
Muhammad Makkey Bhutta

Civil and military leadership of Pakistan have always played tremendous role and formulating and executing different policies regarding every issue of state. The significance of mainstream print media cannot be neglected as it forms public option regarding civil and military institutions in all countries. There, the research has been designed to analyse portrayal of Pakistani civil and military leadership by four newspapers of UK and USA (Telegraph, Guardian, New York Times & Washington Post) during tenures of PPP (1995-1996 & 2008-2013). Quantitative content analysis has been adapted as research methodology to analyse features/articles, editorials and news stories in 9 major categories and 13 sub-categories with total 4053 published items in domain of civil & military leadership of Pakistan regarding different issues of the tenures of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). Findings have divulged that British and American newspapers covered news stories against of military leadership of Pakistan especially in category of terrorism while greater pro-civilian coverage has been found in comparison of pro- military coverage in tenures PPP. Mr. Asif Ali Zardari has been covered with more negative representation before in power as compared to his regime as President of Pakistan. On the basis of cumulative representation in all categories, overall impression of Pakistan has been reflected negative and unfavourable in British and American Print Media.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-220

I WAS among 5 from the Seattle-King County Department of Public Health and 1 from the Medical School who left for Iran early in 1951 and 1952 and, as the Seattle Times reported after my return— "Halfway Around the World from Puget Sound, a handful of `Shirt-Sleeve Diplomats' from Seattle have been fighting communists for the past 2 years by killing mosquitoes. "The first phases of their program have worked so well that in one Iranian city the undertaker complained that he had too little business and demanded a salary from the public treasury. He got it too!" The Director of the Foreign Operations Administration's Mission in Iran, Mr. William E. Warne, in an interview with the New York Times last spring credited the public health program in Iran as the greatest single factor in keeping Iran on this side of the Iron Curtain. The Seattle group were among 37 American public health specialists, most of them commissioned as officers in the U.S. Public Health Service, employed in the Point IV program, now a part of the Foreign Operations Administration, in Iran, a country almost as large as all of the United States east of the Mississippi River. The World Health Organization was in Iran too. When we arrived, WHO had a malaria control advisory unit of 3 technicians:


2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 554-570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaitlynn Mendes

Using both content and critical discourse analysis, this article traces the emergence of and changes in the ways feminism has been discursively constructed in 998 British and American news articles between 1968 and 1982 – which I define as the ‘height’ of the Second Feminist Wave, and 2008 – marking 40 years after feminism began gaining momentum in both nations. In analysing the British Times, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, and Guardian newspapers, as well as the American New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Washington Times, I argue that not only has there been an erasure of feminist activism from these newspapers over time, but that discourses of feminism have become both de-politicized and de-radicalized since the 1960s, and can now largely be considered neoliberal in nature – a problematic construction for those seeking collective social change.


Author(s):  
Arlini binti Alias ◽  
Nora Mohd Nasir

The objective of this study is to examine the linguistic representation of social actors in the selected Malaysian and foreign news reports on the circulated event of the missing MAS flight MH370. Despite extensive studies of news discourse, less attention is paid on how news event are speculated and the extent the social actors are relegated. Hence, the study explores the role of newspaper editorials in promoting stereotypical depictions through the representation of self- and other- in their reporting of the MH370 tragedy. The study retrieved a total of fifty (50) news reports of the missing MAS flight MH370 incident from ten news press, twenty-five (25) published by five local (Malaysian) English newsagents: The Star, New Straits Times, Sun Daily, Malaysian Insider and Malaysiakini, and twenty-five (25) others from five foreign newsagents: Daily Mail (UK), The Guardian (UK), Washington Post, New York Times and USA Today. The corpora were collected from March 8, 2014, to November 5, 2014, and analysed using Van Dijk’s (1998) Ideological Square framework, as well as Reisigl and Wodak (2000) Discursive Strategies. The analysis of this study discovers evidence of the “intergroup bias” made by the selected news press in representing the MH370 social actors. The selected news press displays an overt preference for own group and obvious demotion of the other group. The study also reveals the occurrence of lexicalization of the ‘other’ in the foreign news reports indicating positive representation of their in-group and exhibiting apparent disapproval of the actions by the out-group. On the other hand, the analysis also reveals an impartial representation of the MH370 social actor by the local news press both for in-group and out-group.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 519-529
Author(s):  
Kate Whittemore, MPH ◽  
Mustafa Ali, MPH ◽  
Andrew Schroeder, MPA, MA ◽  
Neil M. Vora, MD ◽  
David Starr, MIA ◽  
...  

During certain public health emergencies, points of dispensing (PODs) may be used to rapidly distribute medical countermeasures such as antibiotics to the general public to prevent disease. Jurisdictions across the country have identified sites for PODs in preparation for such an emergency; in New York City (NYC), the sites are identified based largely on population density. Vulnerable populations, defined for this analysis as persons with income below the federal poverty level, persons with less than a high school diploma, foreign-born persons, persons of color, persons aged ≥65 years, physically disabled persons, and unemployed persons, often experience a wide range of health inequities. In NYC, these populations are often concentrated in certain geographic areas and rely heavily on public transportation. Because public transportation will almost certainly be affected during large-scale public health emergencies that would require the rapid mass dispensing of medical countermeasures, we evaluated walking distances to PODs. We used an ordinary least squares (OLS) model and a geographically weighted regression (GWR) model to determine if certain characteristics that increase health inequities in the population are associated with longer distances to the nearest POD relative to the general NYC population. Our OLS model identified shorter walking distances to PODs in neighborhoods with a higher percentage of persons with income below the federal poverty level, higher percentage of foreign-born persons, or higher percentage of persons of color, and identified longer walking distances to PODs in neighborhoods with a higher percentage of persons with less than a high school diploma. Our GWR model confirmed the findings from the OLS model and further illustrated these patterns by certain neighborhoods. Our analysis shows that currently identified locations for PODs in NYC are generally serving vulnerable populations equitably—particularly those defined by race or income status—at least in terms of walking distance.


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