Measles, Media and Memory: Journalism’s Role in Framing Collective Memory of Disease

Journal of Medical Humanities 43 (3):405-420 (2022)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

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of the disease, which imposed present values on the medical past, and which were constructed of decontextualized historical references that supported prevailing contemporary notions of the disease.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.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Memory, Responsibility, and Identity.Ross Poole - 2008 - Social Research: An International Quarterly 75:263-286.
Memory, responsibility, and identity.Ross Poole - 2008 - Social Research: An International Quarterly 75 (1):263-286.
Ethics & journalism.Karen Sanders - 2003 - Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
Collective Identity and Collective Memory in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur.David J. Leichter - 2012 - Études Ricoeuriennes / Ricoeur Studies 3 (1):114-131.
The Habitual Body and its Role in Collective Memory Formation.C. Tewes - 2018 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 25 (7-8):135-157.

Analytics

Added to PP
2021-08-03

Downloads
12 (#929,405)

6 months
3 (#445,838)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?