Social representations about emerging infeccious diseases: The swine flu in the mass media of Mexico and Spain

Abstract

The 2009 swine flu was a pandemic influenza involving H1N1 virus. This paper stu- dies how the mass media have treated this issue by analyzing the largest circulation news- papers in Mexico and Spain. According to the Collective Symbolic Coping (CSC), and based on the Social Representation Theory, when an object enters the public sphere grabbing the attention of the media, the public adopts it and share a common understanding. First, a posi- tive correlation between the coverage of the outbreak and influenza-infected and the repre- sentation of health as a problem was found. Secondly, the ALCESTE software identifies the steps of the CSC model. Thirdly, patterns of social representations about health epidemics were repeated. Implications for research on social representations and media coverage and to cope with threatening health crisis are discussed.