Chapter 1. Spanish influenza 1918/19

Abstract

The study focuses on the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918/19, tracing the crisis coverage of two daily newspapers from two different countries, Austria and the United States, to reveal the general dynamics and manipulative potential of mediatized public discourse in times of crisis. The pragma-rhetoric analysis examines, first, which social actors gain access to the media to voice their opinion and, second, how they attempt to manipulate public perception to avoid blame, for example, by instrumentalizing certain groups as scapegoats. The results of the cross-national comparison of the two historic newspapers reveal patterns in crisis reporting on the Spanish flu that are intriguingly reminiscent of contemporary media coverage of the recent Corona Pandemic.