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Pandemic Rhetoric and Public Memory. What People (Don’t) Remember from the 2009 Swine Flu

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Rhetorical Audience Studies and Reception of Rhetoric

Part of the book series: Rhetoric, Politics and Society ((RPS))

Abstract

Pandemics are potentially very serious events, so to prepare for future episodes, we must learn from past cases. In this chapter, we have adapted a method from the ethnographic tradition, which we dub “spontaneous interviews,” and applied it to explore how members of the Norwegian public experienced the pandemic. Studying in particular what they remember about the pandemic rhetoric, we find that our informants misremember many aspects of the communication, ranging from a simple failure to remember, through factual errors, to creative assessments of the episode. We conclude that long-term responses to pandemic rhetoric depend not least on the rhetor’s preestablished credibility, and for this reason, we suggest, the health authorities appear to have little to lose from communicating outside the media in pandemic situations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We have previously studied the production of the 2009 pandemic rhetoric, see Brekke et al. (2017), as well as the mediation of the same. See Bjørkdahl (2015).

  2. 2.

    Admittedly, in Egypt, pigs were slaughtered in response to news of the flu. Presumably, the reason was fear of contamination, but a more likely explanation appears to be a desire to target Egypt’s Coptic (Christian) population. See Seef and Jeppsson (2013).

  3. 3.

    Incidentally, toward the end of the pandemic, these homegrown critics were accompanied by similar accusations against the WHO (and in turn against the national health authorities) emanating from the Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and its outspoken leader, Wolfgang Wodarg.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Uni Research Rokkan Centre, Bergen, Norway

    Kristian Bjørkdahl & Benedicte Carlsen

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  1. Kristian Bjørkdahl
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  2. Benedicte Carlsen
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Jens E. Kjeldsen

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Bjørkdahl, K., Carlsen, B. (2018). Pandemic Rhetoric and Public Memory. What People (Don’t) Remember from the 2009 Swine Flu. In: Kjeldsen, J. (eds) Rhetorical Audience Studies and Reception of Rhetoric. Rhetoric, Politics and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61618-6_10

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