The social construction of SARS : studies of a health communication crisis / edited by John H. Powers, Xiaosui Xiao.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Powers, John H. (John Henry), 1947-

Xiao, Xiaosui.

Series:

Discourse approaches to politics, society, and culture ; v. 30.

Discourse approaches to politics, society, and culture ; v. 30

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

SARS (Disease).

Communication in public health.

Physical Description:

vi, 242 p. : ill.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; Philadelphia : John Benjamins Pub., c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

When the SARS virus began its spread from southern China around the world in spring 2003, it caught regional and international health officials by surprise. The SARS epidemic itself lasted for only a few months, whereas its treatment, in communicative terms, keeps providing us with important lessons that can prepare us all for the much larger pandemic that many are predicting will eventually occur. While the medical aspects of SARS are now relatively well understood, the discursive rhetorical dimensions are much less so. As an international epidemic, SARS arrived in a number of distinctive societies with the result that different communities handled the crisis in different ways, some far more effectively than others. Accordingly, the 12 chapters in The Social Construction of SARS are studies of how a major health-related crisis was understood and dealt with from a communicative perspective in such diverse places as Hong Kong, mainland China, Singapore, Taiwan, Canada and the United States during the SARS outbreak.

Contents:

Hong Kong's multiple constructions of SARS / John H. Powers and Gwendolyn Gong

A hero story without heroes : the Hong Kong government's narratives on SARS / Xiaosui Xiao

"SARS" versus "atypical pneumonia" : inconsistencies in Hong Kong's public health warnings and disease-prevention campaign / Gwendolyn Gong and Sam Dragga

Internet press freedom and online crisis reporting : the role of news web sites in the SARS epidemic / Alice Y.L. Lee

Party journalism vs. market journalism : the coverage of SARS by People's Daily and Beijing Youth News / Huang Xiaoyan and Hao Xiaoming

Construction of nationalism and political legitimacy through rhetoric of the anti-SARS campaign : a fantasy theme analysis / Xing Lu

SARS discourse as an anti-SARS ideology : the case of Beijing / Hailong Tian

"Triumph over adversity" : Singapore mobilizes Confucian values to combat SARS / Ian Weber, Tan Howe Yang and Law Loo Shien

Singapore at war : SARS and its metaphors / Chris Hudson

Reporting an emerging epidemic in Taiwan : journalists' experiences of SARS coverage / Mei-Ling Hsu

Newspaper coverage of the 2003 SARS outbreak / J. Brian Houston, Wen-yu Chao and Sandra Ragan

Effects of rationality and story attributes on SARS perception / Shuhua Zhou, Chia-hsin Pan and Xin Zhong.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612104534

9781282104532

1282104535

9789027290854

9027290857

OCLC:

309783970