War Metaphors in Political Communication on Covid-19

Seixas, Eunice Castro

doi:10.3389/fsoc.2020.583680

Cited by 62 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“… 62 However, the metaphorical military language, which characterized institutional (e.g. government) 63 and media (e.g. newspaper and social) communication 64 , 65 during the pandemic, has been underlined to have positive and negative implications.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Italian nurses’ experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic through social media: A longitudinal mixed methods study of Internet posts

et al. 2022

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Objective To examine the experience of Italian nurses posted on social media and discover changes, if any, over the waves. Methods A mixed methods study reported according to the Good Reporting of a Mixed Methods Study criteria. All narratives (texts, letters and interviews) posted by Italian nurses from February 2020 to May 2020 (first wave) and from October 2020 to May 2021 (second/third wave) on the five most famous Italian professional social media platforms. The data were analysed qualitatively (first wave) and then quantitatively (second/third wave). Results A total of 380 narratives (202,626 words, 2510 quotes) were posted in the first wave, and 161 (68,388 words, 835 quotes) in the second/third wave. In the first wave, the following five themes emerged: (a) ‘sharing what is happening within myself’ (891; 35.5%); (b) ‘experiencing unprecedented working conditions’ (749; 29.8%); (c) ‘failing to rehabilitate the image of nurses in society’ (376; 15%); (d) ‘experiencing a deep change’ (253; 10.1%) and (e) ‘do not abandon us’ (241; 9.6%). The same themes and subthemes also emerged in the second/third wave with some significant differences, indicating changes in the lived experience of nurses. Moreover, in the second/third wave, a new theme emerged: ‘experiencing the mixed emotions towards jabs’. Conclusions By analysing their posts, Italian nurses continue to face challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, with changes in their lived experiences across the waves. Governments, nursing associations and health care organizations should consider these changes to design policies to prevent the further loss of nurses.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Italian nurses’ experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic through social media: A longitudinal mixed methods study of Internet posts

et al. 2022

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“…Several scholars have examined the use of metaphors, particularly the use of the war metaphor, in the media to speak about novel health emergencies such as Ebola, SARS (Wallis and Nerlich 2005), HIV AIDS (Nie et al, 2016), Cancer (Potts and Elena 2019;Harrington 2012;Reisfield and Wilson 2004;Sontag, 1978). Political authorities usually draw on metaphors and ordinary day images to speak about and make known emerging novel public health concerns (Neshkovska and Trajkova 2020;Castro Seixas, 2020). They do this through making associations between novel pandemics and what the public collectively, culturally, affectively, and politically understands and agrees upon as common knowldege.…”

Section: Anchoring and Objectificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Metaphor of War in Political Discourse on COVID-19 in Uganda

Atuhura

2022

Front. Commun.

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The article examines the use of the metaphor of war in political communication on the novel COVID-19 pandemic in Uganda using two analytical tools of the social representation theory, anchoring and objectification. Drawing data for analysis from six widely televised presidential addresses to the nation on COVID-19 made by Uganda’s president, H.E. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni during the months of March 2020 to September 2020, the article argues that during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a persistent dominant use of the metaphor of war by government representatives as a rhetorical device to communicate about and to make intelligible an emerging unknown virus as a threat that should be managed through combat behavior. In so doing, the use of the war metaphor and its implied call for combat behavior to control, manage, and eradicate the virus spread engendered consequences such as standardizing hegemonic understanding of the nature and causes of the virus as well as normalizing and legitimizing interventions that the government adopted to manage it.

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“…Such purposes are outside the scope of our primary focus: nuanced communication of scientific concepts to inform day-to-day choices by the public and to support rapid decision-making capabilities that are needed from policymakers in dynamic situations. As such, we do not consider 171 war-based analogies any further here and instead focus on analogies of SARS-CoV-2 in 172 terms of how they relate to key epidemiological concepts (but see 19,[21][22][23] on the use of 173 war rhetoric in the context of COVID-19).…”

Section: Analogies and Their Relationship To Models During Covid-19mentioning

confidence: 99%

Fighting a fire versus waiting for a wave: Useful and not-so-useful analogies in times of SARS-CoV-2

Archer¹,

Standley²,

Molnár³

2021

Preprint

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As SARS-CoV-2 has swept the planet, intermittent “lockdowns” have become a regular feature to control transmission. References to so-called recurring “waves” of infections remain pervasive among news headlines, political messaging, and public health sources. Here, we consider the power of analogies as a tool for facilitating effective understanding of biological processes by reviewing the successes and limitations of various analogies in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We also consider how, when analogies fall short, their ability to persuade can mislead public opinion and behaviour, even if unintentionally. While waves can be effective in conveying patterns of disease outbreak retrospectively, we suggest that process-based analogies might be more effective communication tools, given that they are easily mapped to underlying epidemiological concepts and can be extended to include more complex (e.g., spatial) dynamics. Though no single analogy perfectly captures disease dynamics, fire is particularly suitable for visualizing the epidemiological models that are used to understand disease trajectories, underscoring the importance of and reasoning behind control strategies, and, above all, conveying a sense of urgency to galvanise collective action.

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War Metaphors in Political Communication on Covid-19

Cited by 62 publications

References 37 publications

Italian nurses’ experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic through social media: A longitudinal mixed methods study of Internet posts

Italian nurses’ experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic through social media: A longitudinal mixed methods study of Internet posts

The Metaphor of War in Political Discourse on COVID-19 in Uganda

Fighting a fire versus waiting for a wave: Useful and not-so-useful analogies in times of SARS-CoV-2

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