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Media Framing of the Ebola Crisis

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Media Framing of the Ebola Crisis Media Framing of the Ebola Crisis Theresa Vellek Undergraduate Honors Thesis, Sanford School of Public Policy Duke University Durham, North Carolina 2016 Advisors: Prof. Misha Angrist and Prof. Kenneth Rogerson Acknowledgements I would like to offer a sincere thanks to the following people, without whom this thesis would not have been possible: Prof. Misha Angrist, my thesis advisor, for his encouragement, guidance, and feedback was instrumental to the final product. Prof. Kenneth Rogerson, my honors thesis seminar director, for his constant support and for challenging me to think and write to the best of my ability. Prof. Eric Green, my global health professor, for his comments and assistance in conducting statistical analysis of my results. Katherine Chernova, Erin Locey, and Surya Veerabagu, my friends, for being my sounding board for ideas and always brightening my day. Ann and Mark Vellek, my parents, for being a never-ending source of support and encouragement. Table of Contents ABSTRACT ...................................................................................... 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................... 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .................................................. 3 Implications of Media Framing ....................................................................................... 3 Framing as Perception: True versus Manipulated ........................................................ 5 Risk Reporting: Media Coverage of International Crises .............................................. 7 Media Framing of International Health Crises ............................................................. 8 Media Frames Analysis of the Mid-1990s Ebola Outbreaks ....................................... 11 ANCILLARY RESEARCH QUESTIONS .................................. 12 METHODOLOGY ......................................................................... 13 Cases: 2000-2001 Ebola Outbreak and 2014-2015 Ebola Outbreak ........................... 13 Content Analysis & Coding ........................................................................................... 15 Mutation-Contagion Frame ........................................................................................... 17 “Othering” and Containment Frame ............................................................................ 18 Globalization Frame ...................................................................................................... 18 Human Interest Frame .................................................................................................. 19 Economic Consequences Frame .................................................................................... 19 Attribution of Responsibility Frame ............................................................................. 20 Phrase-to-Frame Coding and Analysis ......................................................................... 20 RESULTS ....................................................................................... 22 Sample ............................................................................................................................ 22 Mutation-Contagion Frame ........................................................................................... 24 “Othering” and Containment Frame ............................................................................ 29 Globalization Frame ...................................................................................................... 31 Human Interest Frame .................................................................................................. 33 Economic Consequences Frame .................................................................................... 35 Attribution of Responsibility Frame ............................................................................. 37 CONCLUSION .............................................................................. 39 Application of Frames from the Literature to Recent Ebola Coverage ....................... 39 Differences in Frames from 2000 to 2014 ..................................................................... 43 Differences in Frames Across Media Outlets ............................................................... 46 Consequences of Framing on Public Opinion of Ebola ................................................ 48 Limitations ..................................................................................................................... 49 Future Research ............................................................................................................. 50 REFERENCES .............................................................................. 51 APPENDICES ............................................................................... 57 Appendix 1. Sampling of the Media Coverage ............................................................ 57 Appendix 2. Number of Articles in which Frames Appeared ...................................... 58 Appendix 3. Total Number of Frame Occurrences ....................................................... 59 Appendix 4. Phrase-to-Frame Coding Inputs ............................................................... 60 Abstract This study examines the role of international media framing in coverage of Ebola. A quantitative content analysis compared framing techniques in Ebola coverage across BBC Monitoring, The New York Times, The Daily Telegraph (UK), and The Straits Times (Singapore) in the 2000-2001 and 2014-2015 outbreaks. Results show that mutation contagion was by far the most frequently appearing frame in the media. Recent media coverage also mimicked the tendency to represent Ebola as distinctively “African,” as found in research on the 1990s Ebola outbreak. Additionally, the portrayal of Ebola as a globalized threat was especially important in coverage of the 2014 outbreak. Overall, media coverage of the Ebola crisis appeared highly politicized and event-based. Particularly because the media serve as the primary source of information about infectious disease epidemics for much of the public, their framing has implications for how the world views Ebola. Introduction “The level of outbreak is beyond anything we’ve seen—or even imagined.” — Dr. Tom Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention September 2, 2014 “This is the biggest health problem facing our world in a generation.” — British Prime Minister David Cameron October 17, 2014 Ebola has become a global issue. The newest outbreak far exceeds any previous one. The biggest historic outbreak, in 1976, killed 280 people (CDC, 2015). Since 2014, Ebola has infected almost 30,000 people, killed more than 11,000, and it continues to be a threat because of sexual transmission from male survivors (WHO, 2015; McNeil, 2015). This is not the first global epidemic this century. The world endured SARS, the avian bird flu, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Sixteen percent of all deaths are from infectious diseases (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2015). But absent any effective treatment or vaccine, public health officials are still unprepared to deal with contagions like Ebola. Infectious diseases pose a security threat that the public and the media have previously overlooked. The media serve as a reflection of the public’s concern and contribute to the general population’s understanding of health epidemics (Shih, Wijaya, & Brossard, 2008). The social and political contexts of infectious disease epidemics are captured in the frames mass media employ to tell stories about emerging diseases. Framing theory suggests that how the media present an issue affects how audiences feel about that issue (Ungar, 1998; Shih, Wijaya, & Brossard, 2008). Thus analyzing news coverage of disease crises offers a window for understanding public opinion and knowledge. 2 This paper endeavored to understand the role of media framing in coverage of two international health crises involving a single infectious pathogen. A content and frame analysis of news articles compared coverage of the 2014 Ebola outbreak with the more extensively researched 2000-2001 outbreak (425 infections; 224 deaths) (CDC, 2015). This analysis identified trends in media coverage of the Ebola crisis by applying frames recognized in past studies of infectious disease outbreaks. Theoretical Framework Implications of Media Framing Individuals use media coverage as a cognitive shortcut, or heuristic, to make sense of complex risks, including infectious disease pandemics (Ungar, 1998). The public “co-constructs” what they see, read, and hear from the media with information from personal experience to understand an issue (Dearing & Rogers, 1996). Thus studying how the media interpret specific issues is a prerequisite to understanding the dynamics surrounding public perception (Shih, Wijaya, & Brossard, 2008; Ungar, 1998). Goffman (1986) first introduced the concept of framing as an interpretation or schema that aims to structure the meaning of a message. Entman and others suggest that analyses of frames in the media reveal how reading a story influences readers’ attitudes about an issue (Entman, 1993). Two types of media framing exist: journalistic and reader (Burton, 2010; Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007). Journalistic framing describes familiar features and conventions in text that make it easy for the reader to take away the intended message of the producer (in this case the media
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