![]() This paper examines that reporting in the initial period following the ‘emergence’ of SARS. SARS was first reported in the UK newspapers on the 16 March 2003. ![]() The WHO then took the unusual step of issuing a worldwide alert. By the third week in March, several hundred people were infected, with cases reported in Hong Kong, Singapore, Toronto, New Jersey, California and Bangkok ( Zambon & Nicholson, 2003a). Around 15% of patients affected required artificial ventilation and there was a relatively high death rate, in the order of 5%. The disease manifests as a fever, lasting 3–7 days, followed by a period of breathlessness and chest pain. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) first came to the attention of the World Health Organisation (WHO) at the end of February 2003 in Hanoi, Vietnam. In particular, this study examines the phenomena of ‘emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases’ over the past 30 or so years and suggests that these have impacted on the faith once widely held that Western biomedicine could ‘conquer’ infectious disease. Yet this study also highlights a number of differences in the social representations of SARS compared with earlier epidemics. ![]() In this sense, the SARS scare, despite the remarkable speed with which it was played out in the modern global news media, resonates with the meanings attributed to other epidemics of infectious diseases throughout history. It investigates the way that SARS was presented as a dangerous threat to the UK public, whilst almost immediately the threat was said to be ‘contained’ using the mechanism of ‘othering’: SARS was said to be unlikely to personally affect the UK reader because the Chinese were so different to ‘us’ so ‘other’. This study examines how this novel disease threat was depicted in the UK newspapers, using social representations theory and in particular existing work on social representations of HIV/AIDS and Ebola to analyse the meanings of the epidemic. In the Spring of 2003, there was a huge interest in the global news media following the emergence of a new infectious disease: severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). ![]()
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