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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2016

Anat Gesser-Edelsburg ,
Yaffa Shir-Raz ,
Oshrat Sassoni Bar-Lev ,
James J. James  and
Manfred S. Green
Anat Gesser-Edelsburg*
Affiliation:
School of Public Health, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
Yaffa Shir-Raz
Affiliation:
School of Public Health, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
Oshrat Sassoni Bar-Lev
Affiliation:
Department of Communication, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
James J. James
Affiliation:
Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Bethesda, Maryland.
Manfred S. Green
Affiliation:
School of Public Health, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
*
Correspondence and reprint requests to Anat Gesser-Edelsburg, PhD, Health Promotion Program, School of Public Health, University of Haifa, 199 Aba Khoushy Ave, Mount Carmel, Haifa 3498838, Israel (e-mail: ageser@univ.haifa.ac.il).
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Abstract

Objective

Our aim was to examine in what terms leading newspapers’ online sites described the current Ebola crisis.

Methods

We 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.

Results

We 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.

Conclusions

Effective 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)

Keywords

Ebolaframing affectoutbreak and epidemicEID communicationcontent analysis
Type
Original Research
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , August 2016 , pp. 669 - 673
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc. 2016 

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