Finding Hope in Media Hype

Research Journal of the Institute for Public Relations

Vol. 3, No. 2 (February 2017)

© 2017 Institute for Public Relations

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Finding Hope in Media Hype: The Challenges of Crisis

Communications During Disease Outbreaks

Shelley Aylesworth-Spink, Ph.D.

Principal Lecturer in Public Relations and Advertising

Westminster School of Media, Arts and Design

University of Westminster

Abstract

Raging influenza, an unthinkable return of measles and the plague, and the scourge of Ebola–

such deadly and miserable diseases and viruses shape real and imagined threats all around us.

Nowhere does our imagination run wilder, nor does the world appear more on edge, than through

news stories and broadcasts. Given this state of affairs, the public relations agenda with respect

to health crisis communications planning and execution is seriously challenged. This article uses

media-hype theory to examine these unique challenges by comparing what happened and why

during an influenza pandemic outbreak in 2009. It draws from a larger study of news coverage

and interviews with public relations practitioners, journalists and medical leaders involved with

public communications during a pandemic in Canada. Certainly, media-hype was present during

the outbreak with the amount and type of news coverage unevenly representing the severity of

the outbreak. Findings from this analysis extend the media-hype phenomenon by looking at the

triggers for such intense media attention, highlighting the role of not only the news media but

public relations practitioners in our hyper health-threatened world.

Executive Summary

Times of widespread ill-health, pandemic declaration or even isolated health issues from

a summer salad gone wrong uniquely challenge public relations practitioners. An enormously

anxious public demands information as much as they do health solutions during these uncertain

times, leaving public relations professionals scrambling to shift crisis communications actions

into high gear.

Yet these actions can sometimes prove insufficient or head in a wrong direction. The rise

in media intensity around health matters, in particular, calls for us to question such

communications failures. Sometimes, overwhelming media attention can be traced to an

underdeveloped understanding about the media’s approach and interest to produce news when

health crises strike. These problems also find their causes in the actions of public relations

practitioners as they prepare and respond to looming or present public health issues.

This article draws from a study about one of these exceptional times: the construction of

public communications during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic outbreak in Canada. Key to

this study was a combination of grounded theory and qualitative content analysis of the 587

front-page national news stories produced from April to December 2009 and 16 interviews with

journalists who covered the outbreak and public relations practitioners and medical leaders in

public health departments who managed the roll-out of crisis communications plans.

A constructivist media theory that closely relates to what happened during the H1N1

outbreak is “media-hype” which highlights journalists as reporting news and constructing reality

(Vasterman, 2005). Media-hype is defined as a media-generated, wall-to-wall news wave