Article published In:
Journal of Language and PoliticsVol. 9:3 (2010) ► pp.393–408
Bird flu hype
The spread of a disease outbreak through the media and Internet discussion groups
Bird flu, otherwise known as avian influenza, has attracted widespread public and global attention. The H5N1 avian influenza virus was first documented as infecting humans in Hong Kong in 1997 and many of those infected died subsequently from the virus that had been transmitted from poultry to humans. It took several years, however, before a hyped up type of public debate about bird flu began in around 2004. This article examines the hype surrounding public debates about bird flu in medical journals, newspapers and public discussion forums from 1997 to 2006. The article focuses on the development of the frequencies of published texts, and the terminology used in the three databases. The quantitative results will be accompanied by a hermeneutic interpretation of the main sub-topics within the debates. These (preliminary) results contribute to research dealing with the emergence of hypes and the spread of public debates more generally.
References
Benford, Robert D. and Snow, David A.
2000 Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment. Annual Review of Sociology 261, 11–39. 
Bono, James
1990 Science, discourse, and literature. The role/rule of metaphor in science. In St. Peterfreund (ed.). Literature and science. Theory and practice. Boston: Northeastern University press.
Brown, Nik
2003 Hope against hype — Accountability in Biopasts, Presents and Futures. Science Studies 16(2), 3–21.
Bubela, Tania M. and Caulfield, Timothy
2004 Do the print media hype genetic research? A comparison of newspaper stories and peer-reviewed research papers. Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computing 170(9), 1399–1407.
Caulfield, Timothy
2004 Biotechnology and the popular press: hype and the selling of science. TRENDS in biotechnology 22(7)
, 337–339.
Cox, Manon M.
2005 Pandemic influenza: Overview of vaccines and antiviral drugs. Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 78(5), 321–328
Entman, Robert M.
1993 Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication 43(4), 51–58.
Gamson, William A. and Modigliani, Andre
1989 Media discourse and public opinion on nuclear power: A constructionist approach. American Journal of Sociology 95(1), 1–37.
Ginneken, Jaap van
2003 Collective behaviour and public opinion. Rapid shifts in opinion and communication. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Guan Y, Peiris JS, Poon LL, Dyrting KC, Ellis TM, Sims L, Webster RG, Shortridge KF
2003 Reassortants of H5N1 influenza viruses recently isolated from aquatic poultry in Hong Kong. Avian Diseases 471(3 Suppl), 911–3.
Hellsten, Iina and Leydesdorff, Loet and Wouters, Paul
2006 Multiple presents: How search engines re-write the past. New Media and Society 8(6), 901–924.
Hellsten, Iina
2000 Dolly: Scientific breakthrough or Frankenstein’s monster? Journalistic and scientific metaphors of cloning. Metaphor and Symbol 15(4), 213–221.
2002 The Politics of Metaphor: Biotechnology and Biodiversity in the Media. Acta Universitatis Tamperensis; 876, Tampere University Press, Tampere. Partly available online at: [URL]
.
Hellsten, Iina and Nerlich, Brigitte
2008 Communicating genetics and genomics: The Politics and ethics of metaphorical framing. In: Massimiano Bucchi and Brian Trench (eds.). The Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology. London, UK: Routledge, 93–109.
Hellsten, Iina and Dawson, James and Leydesdorff, Loet
in press. Implicit media frames: Automated analysis of public debate on artificial sweeteners. Public Understanding of Science, (in press, on-line available since September 2009)
Leydesdorff, Loet and Hellsten, Iina
2005 Metaphors and diaphors in science communication: Mapping the case of stem-cell research. Science Communication 27(1): 64–99: [URL].
2006 Measuring the meanings of words in contexts: automated analysis of “Monarch butterflies”, “Frankenfoods” and “stem cells”, Scientometrics 67(2): 231–258.
Maasen, Sabine and Weingart, Peter
2000 Metaphors and the Dynamics of Knowledge. London and New York: Routledge.
Nerlich, Brigitte.
2009 “The post-antibiotic apocalypse” and the “war on superbugs”: Catastrophe discourse in microbiology, its rhetorical form and political function. Public Understanding of Science 18(5), 574–590.
Nerlich, Brigitte and Halliday, Christopher
2007 Avian flu: The creation of expectations in the interplay between science and the media. Sociology of Health and Illness 29(1), 46–65.
Nisbet, Matthew C. and Mooney, Chris
2007 Reply: The risks and advantages of framing science. Science, 3171, 5842, 1169–1170.
Okabe, Nobuhiko
2003 The possibility and preparedness for pandemic of new influenza. Nippon Rinsho / Japanese Journal of Clinical Medicine 61(11), 1904–8.
Scheufele, Dietmar A.
1999 Framing as a theory of media effects. Journal of Communication 49(1), 103–122.
Scheufele Dietmar A. and Tewksbury, David
2007 Framing, agenda setting, and priming: The evolution of three media effects models. Journal of Communication, 57(1), 9–20.
Schön, Donald A. and Rein, Martin
1994 Frame Reflection: Toward the Resolution of Intractable Policy Controversies. New York: Basic Books.
Star, Susan L. and Griesemer, James
1989 Institutional ecology, translations, and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals at Berkeley“s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39. Social Studies of Science 191, 387–402
Taubenberg, Jeffery K. and Reid, Ann H. And Lourens, Raina M. And Wang, Ruixue and Jin Guozhong and Fanning, Thomas G.
2005 Characterization of the 1918 influenza virus polymerase genes. Nature 4371, 889–893
Thelwall, Mike and Vann, Katie and Fairclough, Ruth
2006 Web issue analysis: An Integrated Water Resource Management case study. Journal of the American Society for information Science and Technology 57(10), 1303–1314.
Thelwall, Mike and Prabowo, Rudy and Fairclough, Ruth
2006 Are raw RSS feeds suitable for broad issue scanning? A science concern case study. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 57(12), 1644–1654.
Thelwall, Mike and Hellsten, Iina
2006 The BBC, Daily Telegraph and Wikinews timelines of the terrorist attacks of 7th July 2006 in London: a comparison with contemporary discussions. Information Research12(1) paper 84 [Available at [URL]]
Tumpey, Terrence M. and Basler, Christopher F. and Aguilar, Patricia W. and Zeng, Hui and Solórzano, Alicia and Swayne, David E. and Cox, Nancy J. and Katz, Jacqueline M. and Taubenberger, Jeffery K. and Palese, Peter and García-Sastre, Adolfo
2005 Characterization of the reconstructed 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic virus. Science 3101, 77–80.
Vasterman, Peter
2005 Media-hype. Self-reinforcing news waves, journalistic standards and the construction of social problems. European Journal of Communication 20(4), 508–530.
2004 Media hypes. Amsterdam: Aksant.
Cited by
Cited by 12 other publications
Alcíbar, Miguel
2018. Information visualisation as a resource for popularising the technical-biomedical aspects of the last Ebola virus epidemic: The case of the Spanish reference press. Public Understanding of Science 27:3 ► pp. 365 ff. 
Barrelet, Clara, Mathilde Bourrier, Claudine Burton‐Jeangros & Mélinée Schindler
2013. Unresolved issues in risk communication research: the case of the H1N1 pandemic (2009–2011). Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses 7:s2 ► pp. 114 ff.
Hellsten, Iina, Sandra Jacobs & Anke Wonneberger
2019. Active and passive stakeholders in issue arenas: A communication network approach to the bird flu debate on Twitter. Public Relations Review 45:1 ► pp. 35 ff.
Hellsten, Iina & Eleftheria Vasileiadou
2015. The creation of the climategate hype in blogs and newspapers: mixed methods approach. Internet Research 25:4 ► pp. 589 ff.
Joris, Willem, Liina Puustinen & Leen d’Haenens
2018. More news from the Euro front: How the press has been framing the Euro crisis in five EU countries. International Communication Gazette 80:6 ► pp. 532 ff.
Marinescu, Valentina
2020. The Analysis of Media Coverage and Scientific Literature on Food and Nutrition: The Case of Eastern European Countries. In Food, Nutrition and the Media, ► pp. 21 ff.
Nelissen, Sara, Kathleen Beullens, Marc Sabbe & Jan Van den Bulck
2014. The Swine Flu Emergency Department: The Relationship Between Media Attention for the Swine Flu and Registrations in an Emergency Medicine Unit. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine 29:2 ► pp. 141 ff.
Stevens, T.M., N. Aarts & A. Dewulf
2019. The emergence and evolution of master terms in the public debate about livestock farming: Semantic fields, communication strategies and policy practices. Discourse, Context & Media 31 ► pp. 100317 ff.
Stevens, T.M., N. Aarts, C.J.A.M. Termeer & A. Dewulf
2018. Social media hypes about agro-food issues: Activism, scandals and conflicts. Food Policy 79 ► pp. 23 ff.
Thomas, Trevor, Annabelle Wilson, Emma Tonkin, Emma R. Miller & Paul R. Ward
2020. How the Media Places Responsibility for the COVID-19 Pandemic—An Australian Media Analysis. Frontiers in Public Health 8
Ward, Paul R
2020. A sociology of the Covid-19 pandemic: A commentary and research agenda for sociologists. Journal of Sociology 56:4 ► pp. 726 ff.
Ward, Paul R. & Kristen Foley
2023. Introduction: Pandemic-Emotions, Ontologies of Uncertainty and Imagining Emotional Futures. In The Emerald Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions for a Post-Pandemic World, ► pp. 1 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.