From Outbreak to Pandemic Narrative: Reading Newspaper Coverage of the 2014 Ebola Epidemic

Abstract

Using framing analysis, this article explores how the English language press organized coverage of the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. The coverage began with a standard “outbreak” narrative that defined the problem in terms of “primitive” lifeways and inadequate humanitarian aid. However, after the World Health Organization declared an international emergency and after Ebola carriers began to appear in the West, the framing changed toward a “pandemic” narrative that shifted attention away from medical solutions, humanitarian aid, and national safety toward government and military action, biosecurity, and the global species network. This change in the press narrative makes sense to populations in the West because they increasingly live within a “pandemic culture” that has become characteristic of globalized societies.