Abstract
Eleni Pothou holds a B.A. in Greek Philology with a major in Linguistics from Athens University and an M.A. in Media and Communication Systems from Istanbul Bilgi University. Her MA dissertation focused on the success of Turkish TV drama series in Greece under the scope of cultural proximity. She is a 1st-year Ph.D. Student at Koç University. Her research focuses on issues of cultural proximity, collective memory, and identity formation.
The timing of the publication of this book could not be more apposite. Constructing the Outbreak: Epidemics in Media & Collective Memory presents six cases of epidemics and one pandemic and their representations in the media of the time and today's contemporary representation in popular culture. It undergoes a tremendous investigation of “all media available about the epidemic's time in the town of focus” (p. x), which not only includes newspapers -starting from the 18th century onwards- but also pamphlets, diaries, advertisements, magazines. In the epicenter of the book are two primary questions; how have available media platforms constructed news of epidemics in their cultural moments, and how have contemporary media products constructed diseases of the past, thus shaping collective memory (p. 2).
The book is divided into seven chapters. Each one investigates a particular outbreak in the USA, either at the state or national level, on a chronological sequence, pointing to different trends in media representation and coverage, reception, and collective memory. The first chapter investigates the smallpox epidemic in Boston in 1721 that marks the beginning of inoculation. It is the story of Cotton Mather, who brought the practice of inoculation in colonial America, and the story of the first newspaper (The New-England Courant) for and by colonial people that served as an “outlet for public discussion” (p. 18) with a vigorous polemic against and warm supporting in favor of inoculation. The second chapter presents the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia -at the time, America's capital- in 1793. The newspapers proved to be an actor of civic engagement between the authorities and the people. For the first time, a pamphlet of two African Americans was published presenting their narratives against the public's perception of African Americans’ role, which was undermined and the community discriminated. However, experiences of grief, death, and sickness have not been addressed in the media of the time, even though they are to be found in the townspeople's diaries. In the third chapter, the case of tuberculosis in the late 19th century focused on Colorado Springs and the narrative promoting health tourism in the newspapers when falsely thought that tuberculosis was hereditary. The shift to the acceptance of the germ theory and of tuberculosis as a contagious disease led to a parallel shift to a discourse of stigmatization on the one hand and of informing the public on the other.
The fourth chapter and the endemic of typhus in the early 20th century is the most interesting part of the book. It presents the case of an immigrant Irish woman, Mary Mallon, that turned to be mythologized as Typhoid Mary, a threat to public health. She embodies the new concept of “healthy carrier” isolated for many years, raising questions about civil liberties and personal freedom versus public health authorities and the public good. During her first quarantine, media coverage and attention scapegoated Mary while educating the people on the new concept of “healthy carrier.” Throughout the years of public discussion, the voice of Mary has been absent. The fifth chapter investigates the influenza pandemic of 1918–19 in Lawrence, Kansas, as the first place that documented influenza cases. The way the news framed the pandemic during WWI is portraited. Newspaper propagandized the patriotic duty of contaminating the disease, emphasizing the depiction of the disease as a foreign enemy, the “Spanish flu,” to ostracize the reasons for the outbreak away from US soil. The patriotic discourse was used to enforce health practices with many gender-specific articles and downplaying of the outbreak, especially at its beginning. Typical of the patriotic propaganda is the following blurb: “Kaiser laughs when you spread disease, So stop the coughs and cover the sneeze” (p. 132).
The sixth chapter presents the diphtheria outbreak in Nome, Alaska, in 1925 and discusses the access and distribution of medical supplies. The media narrative was a dramatic call for urgent delivery in the beginning and a heroic depiction of the husky-dog race against time to deliver antitoxin. Racism underscored media coverage highlighting the difference between the Americans and the Eskimos. The case studies end with the seventh chapter on the poliomyelitis outbreak of 1952 in Minnesota's Twin Cities. It focuses on the media campaign's role that effectively supported the fundraising for rehabilitation and vaccine research before the outbreak, turning polio into a “disease of media” (p. 177). The heavy media coverage included politicians' and celebrities' participation with Franklin Delano Roosevelt's most prominent name, establishing a public perception before the outbreak. Still, the mass panic was lurking due to the extensive coverage of the disease. However, the coverage in Minnesota during the outbreak downplayed the rising cases.
The chapters provide insight into how media framing and language affect the way stories are told. The cases that Foss presents highlight the media agenda and hegemony of certain ideologies and, therefore, certain “heroes” , promoting a reinforcement of discrimination and stigma, especially for the voiceless, marginalized, or powerless people while their stories stay untold. On the other hand, it pointed out the media's informative character and their influence on health behavior as an agent of civic engagement. These conflicting media discourses and the audience variation as emerging themes point to a fluctuation in coverage that “demonstrates media's agenda-setting function and ability to dictate how important a particular topic is in a particular moment.” Throughout the cases, it becomes evident how the media shaped the construction of American health care perceptions and how the writing style shifted from literate to scientific oriented (p. 216).
Focusing on the shaping of collective memory, Foss argues that contemporary media distorts the nature of the disease by spoofing it with few -if any- cases of transmitting people's stories and the importance of the disease itself. Since media as a vector of collective memory “contributes to what people think and know about the disease” (p. 216), contemporary media provide a distorted image of the actual epidemics, therefore hindering a reconstruction of the past which consequently shapes the public perception. The examination of epidemic history shows that today's concerns and debates have much older roots. Foss highlights the need to focus on the representation of the past media to learn from its flaws and reconstruct the media discourse , acknowledging the current health crisis. The “ahistorical appearance” of endemics and influenza pandemic in the society (p. 144) and the ignorance around them, even though these diseases still exist, will threaten the people as long as the discourse does not shift to the disease itself, and the stories of people that took part without hindering essential information.
While the book offers promising data and themes, the absence of a historical approach highlights only scattered points with no continuity or historicity. A history of the “media of disease” could providefurther insight of the turning points in the media history ; for example, the outbreak of poliomyelitis in the 7th chapter happened when radio was introduced to the American people, and television was about to take-off. The absence of a discussion on technology and mass adoption and the process of media enculturation hinders to bring to light the level of magnitude that the campaigns had. Moreover, data about the literacy, readership, production, and distribution of the media would help conceptualize shifts—if any—in the trends. Otherwise, these “cultural moments” will remain disconnected from each other, distorting the bigger images lying behind.
