By Elliott Nguyen

With this project I wanted to examine what names were used in media coverage to refer to the A(H1N1)pdm09 pandemic, as well as briefly glance at how the pandemic was portrayed and if media coverage adversely affected certain groups. The following story map, made with Knightlab, analyzes 13 articles written about the pandemic.

Knightlab story map

ANALYSIS

Of the 13 articles referenced in the story map, seven were written in 2009, when the pandemic was at its peak. The three U.S. articles, by the New York Times, Time, and AAAS, used “swine flu” to reference the virus. The Jerusalem Post, in an Israel that saw its health minister call for use of “Mexican flu” as a name, used “swine flu” in its May article and “H1N1” in its August article. The Guardian and China Post articles, from the U.K. and China respectively, both made use of the “swine flu” name, though the China Post piece used it only to acknowledge that the Chinese government had changed its policy to refer to the virus as H1N1. Thus, it would seem that in 2009 the most common name for the virus across the globe was “swine flu”, though China changed its policy early on. In 2010, the CDC issued guidelines for cruise ships that referenced the virus as H1N1, and this would mark an increase in usage of medical terminology. The WHO officially standardized the virus as A(H1N1)pdm09 the following year, after which all three articles (of those written after WHO’s standardization) made at least partial use of the H1N1 name.

POTENTIAL ADVERSE AFFECTS TOWARDS MEXICAN AND LATINO COMMUNITIES

The scholarly article by McAuley, et al. argues that Mexicans and Latinos were unfairly targeted as a result of the H1N1 pandemic. Referencing psychological research and studies conducted, they claim that the news media’s portrayal of the virus contributed to a public fear that adversely affected those communities. Do the articles in the story map, as well as this analysis of them, corroborate that claim? Only in part. While the sample size is small, the story map would seem to suggest that though the “Mexican Flu” name had been circulated by certain government officials, it did not catch on in the news media at large. The articles that discussed H1N1’s origin did not make definitive statements one way or the other as to where it originated, Asia or Mexico (the two most commonly cited locations) instead offering evidence from both sides. However, the content of the referenced articles did include mentions of government officials whose actions could reasonably have harmed Mexican and Latino communities, as well as accusations against the Chinese government of unfairly targeting Mexicans. Thus, while they seem to suggest that Mexican and Latino communities could certainly have been adversely affected by the pandemic and the public perception, the referenced articles do not appear in-and-of themselves to contribute to such a phenomenon.

WORKS CITED

Bradsher, Keith. “The Naming of Swine Flu, a Curious Matter.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 28 Apr. 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/world/asia/29swine.html.

“Interim Guidance for Cruise Ships during the 2009-10 Influenza Season.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 29 Jan. 2010, www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/guidance/cruiseships.htm.

Jerusalem Post Staff. “Mexico Swine Flu Death Toll Jumps to 19.” The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com, 3 May 2009, www.jpost.com/health-and-sci-tech/health/mexico-swine-flu-death-toll-jumps-to-19.

Kessler, Glenn. “Analysis | Trump’s Bizarre Effort to Tag Obama’s Swine Flu Response as ‘a Disaster’.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 24 Apr. 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/21/trumps-bizarre-effort-tag-obamas-swine-flu-response-disaster/.

Kikon, Chonbenthung S. “SWINE FLU: A Pandemic.” The Morung Express :: Nagaland News | Current News | Latest News | Breaking News – SWINE FLU: A Pandemic, 4 July 2011, web.archive.org/web/20110714120650/www.morungexpress.com/analysis/27870.html.

Martin EnserinkMay. 8, 2009, et al. “Swine Flu Names Evolving Faster Than Swine Flu Itself.” Science, 10 Dec. 2017, www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/05/swine-flu-names-evolving-faster-swine-flu-itself.

McCauley, Michael, et al. “The H1N1 Pandemic: Media Frames, Stigmatization and Coping.” BMC Public Health, BioMed Central, 3 Dec. 2013, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3907032/.

Mundo, Rocío, and Perla Miranda. “Looking Back at Mexico’s H1N1 Virus Pandemic.” El Universal, 23 Apr. 2019, www.eluniversal.com.mx/english/looking-back-mexicos-h1n1-virus-pandemic.

“New Swine Flu Found in China ‘Has Pandemic Potential’.” South China Morning Post, Agence Frace Presse, 1 July 2020, www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3091114/new-swine-flu-found-china-has-pandemic-potential-researchers-say.

Pilkington, Ed. “What’s in a Name? Governments Debate ‘Swine Flu’ versus ‘Mexican Flu’.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 28 Apr. 2009, www.theguardian.com/world/2009/apr/28/mexican-swine-flu-pork-name.

Siegel-Itzkovich, Judy. “’Nearly 1/4 of Israelis Would Refuse H1N1 Vaccine’.” The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com, 17 Aug. 2009, www.jpost.com/israel/nearly-14-of-israelis-would-refuse-h1n1-vaccine.

“Standardization of Terminology of the Pandemic A(H1N1)2009 Virus.”
World Health Organization, World Health Organization, 11 June 2012, www.who.int/influenza/gisrs_laboratory/terminology_ah1n1pdm09/en/.

Young, David. “Renamed Swine Flu Certain to Hit Taiwan.” Renamed Swine Flu Certain to Hit Taiwan – The China Post, 29 Apr. 2009, web.archive.org/web/20091007163957/www.chinapost.com.tw/health/infectious-diseases/2009/04/29/206057/p2/Renamed-swine.htm