School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Australia.
School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Australia.
Soc Sci Med. 2020 Jul;256:113032. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113032. Epub 2020 May 15.
News media can be an important source of information about emerging health threats. They are also significant sites for the production of narrative on threats to life that help to condition and reflect the responses of governments and publics. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one such health threat with particular significance because it represents the failure to manage the risks to antibiotics and other antimicrobials, health technologies that have provided the basis for modern medicine. Knowledge of how news media address this situation is an important element for an effective public health response to AMR and helps to extend the social analysis of health and media. Based on an analysis of television, printed and digital news for 2017 in Australia, this paper examines the patterns and meanings of AMR news. It shows that AMR is a fragmented story mainly framed by scientific discovery. These stories reassure audiences that science is seeking out the means of arresting AMR and, therefore, also constructs lay publics as passive witnesses to the AMR story. This pattern of AMR story-telling furthers the social standing of science and scientists, but it also neglects deliberation on collective action, important lacunae in the social response to AMR.
新闻媒体可以成为有关新出现的健康威胁的重要信息来源。它们也是对威胁生命的叙述的重要场所，这些叙述有助于形成和反映政府和公众的反应。抗菌素耐药性（AMR）就是这样一种健康威胁，其特别重要的原因是它代表了未能管理抗生素和其他抗菌药物的风险，这些健康技术为现代医学提供了基础。了解新闻媒体如何处理这种情况是对 AMR 采取有效公共卫生应对措施的重要因素，并有助于扩展对健康和媒体的社会分析。本文基于对 2017 年澳大利亚电视、印刷和数字新闻的分析，考察了 AMR 新闻的模式和意义。研究表明，AMR 是一个主要由科学发现构成的碎片化故事。这些故事让观众相信，科学正在寻找遏制 AMR 的方法，因此，也将普通公众构建为 AMR 故事的被动见证者。这种 AMR 叙事模式进一步提升了科学和科学家的社会地位，但它也忽视了对集体行动的审议，这是对 AMR 做出社会反应的重要空白。
