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Measles, Media and Memory: Journalism’s Role in Framing Collective Memory of Disease
Language used to describe measles in the press has altered significantly over the last sixty years, a shift that reflects changing perceptions of the disease within the medical community as well as broader changes in public health discourse. California, one of the most populous U.S. states and seat...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer US
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8328814/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34341891 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10912-021-09705-2 |
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author | Conis, Elena Hoenicke, Sarah |
author_facet | Conis, Elena Hoenicke, Sarah |
author_sort | Conis, Elena |
collection | PubMed |
description | Language used to describe measles in the press has altered significantly over the last sixty years, a shift that reflects changing perceptions of the disease within the medical community as well as broader changes in public health discourse. California, one of the most populous U.S. states and seat of the 2015 measles outbreak originating at Disneyland, presents an opportunity for observing these changes. This article offers a longitudinal case study of five decades of measles news coverage by the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, which represented two of the largest news markets in California when the measles vaccine was released, in 1963, and during the 2015 outbreak. Measles reporting during this period displays patterns pointing to an active role for journalists in shaping public understanding of health and medical matters, especially as they recede from public memory, through the employment of available and circulating political and cultural frames. Moreover, journalistic frames in this period of reporting incorporated presentist descriptions of the disease, which imposed present values on the medical past, and which were constructed of decontextualized historical references that supported prevailing contemporary notions of the disease. Framing and the tendency toward presentism, in the context of shifting public health discourse, had the effect of communicating an increasingly severe sounding disease over time, and of shifting blame for that disease’s spread from nature to government to individuals. Journalistic framing and causal stories have much power to shape public understanding of medical matters as they recede from public memory. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8328814 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Springer US |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-83288142021-08-03 Measles, Media and Memory: Journalism’s Role in Framing Collective Memory of Disease Conis, Elena Hoenicke, Sarah J Med Humanit Article Language used to describe measles in the press has altered significantly over the last sixty years, a shift that reflects changing perceptions of the disease within the medical community as well as broader changes in public health discourse. California, one of the most populous U.S. states and seat of the 2015 measles outbreak originating at Disneyland, presents an opportunity for observing these changes. This article offers a longitudinal case study of five decades of measles news coverage by the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, which represented two of the largest news markets in California when the measles vaccine was released, in 1963, and during the 2015 outbreak. Measles reporting during this period displays patterns pointing to an active role for journalists in shaping public understanding of health and medical matters, especially as they recede from public memory, through the employment of available and circulating political and cultural frames. Moreover, journalistic frames in this period of reporting incorporated presentist descriptions of the disease, which imposed present values on the medical past, and which were constructed of decontextualized historical references that supported prevailing contemporary notions of the disease. Framing and the tendency toward presentism, in the context of shifting public health discourse, had the effect of communicating an increasingly severe sounding disease over time, and of shifting blame for that disease’s spread from nature to government to individuals. Journalistic framing and causal stories have much power to shape public understanding of medical matters as they recede from public memory. Springer US 2021-08-03 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC8328814/ /pubmed/34341891 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10912-021-09705-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Conis, Elena Hoenicke, Sarah Measles, Media and Memory: Journalism’s Role in Framing Collective Memory of Disease |
title | Measles, Media and Memory: Journalism’s Role in Framing Collective Memory of Disease |
title_full | Measles, Media and Memory: Journalism’s Role in Framing Collective Memory of Disease |
title_fullStr | Measles, Media and Memory: Journalism’s Role in Framing Collective Memory of Disease |
title_full_unstemmed | Measles, Media and Memory: Journalism’s Role in Framing Collective Memory of Disease |
title_short | Measles, Media and Memory: Journalism’s Role in Framing Collective Memory of Disease |
title_sort | measles, media and memory: journalism’s role in framing collective memory of disease |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8328814/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34341891 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10912-021-09705-2 |
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