Outbreak news production as a site of tension: Journalists’ news-making of global infectious disease

Abstract

News media play a crucial role during infectious disease outbreaks because they shape people’s understanding of not only the disease itself but also the meaning of living in a ‘risk society’, which is imagined as newly and inherently insecure due to the transnational nature of global crises. As a result, studies on media narratives of infectious diseases have explored the issues of territoriality and national security by examining the discursive themes that undergird outbreak news. However, less is known about how these narratives are constructed through professional practice and the experience of those who create news. How journalists balance the interests of their local audience with the interconnected, interdependent aspects of these global events is the central question of this article. Interviewing journalists from the US, the UK, and South Korea who have reported on recent infectious disease outbreaks, I analyzed the news production of global outbreaks by examining the inner struggles, negotiations, and external forces that shape outbreak news. The findings suggest that journalistic practice in the context of global health crises is structured by tensions and contradictions: journalists conceptualize infectious diseases both as ‘foreign’ threats and ‘shared’ problems, try to find a balance between different value systems of newsworthiness such as cultural proximity and global outlook, and simultaneously internalize and resist the existing conventions of the ‘outbreak narrative’.