The 2009 A(H1N1)v flu

pandemic in the media

Csaba Molnr PHD
Magyar Nemzet
molcsa@gmail.com
molnarcsaba.net

2009 flu pandemic

The 2009 flu pandemic or swine flu was an influenza pandemic involving
H1N1 influenza virus
Starting at the spring of 2009 until spring of 2010
Approx. 10-200 million people infected, 280000 dead (18500 death are
proven to be connected to the pandemic)
In Hungary 134 death are connected to the pandemic, 5 pregnant women
16% of pregnant women got vaccinated in Hungary, contrary to the 95% in
Stockholm (Czeizel, 2011)
0.03 mortality rate - contrary to the 100 times higher mortality rate of the
1918 flu pandemic

Role of media
Front page coverage almost every day since the identification and
fast spread of the virus
Research of these articles looking for the signs of biased opinion,
sensationalism or political interests
One-year long monitoring of eight British newspaper (Hilton & Hunt,
2011, Medical Research Council)
Newspapers categorized as serious, middle-market tabloid and tabloid
Articles categorized as alarmist, reassuring or neither
5647 articles containing the phrase H1N1, 1.93 articles/newspaper/day
(incl Sundays)

Number of published papers during the

pandemic

Content of articles
Changes over time:
Beginning: global effects of the pandemic
Later: national morbidity
First deaths: status of the pandemic in the UK

Most of the papers were neither reassuring or alarming

One third of people used some kind of prevention
Hardly half of them would vaccinated themselves
Disappearance of articles on the pandemic calmed people

Representation of the pandemic globally

Review of papers investigating the representation of the 2009 flu
pandemic in media analyzed European, Chinese, American and
Australian newspapers and TV-chanels (Klemm et al, 2014)
Investigated if media dramatized the situation
Most paper were factual, not dramatized
Most papers were about the threat of the pandemic with less
attention to prevention and the effect of counter-measures
As a possible consequence, people did not react properly to the pandemic

Reaction in Hungarian media

One thesis at (Horvth, 2010, Corvinus University) investigated the
articles related to the pandemic published in the two largest
Hungarian national daily newspapers
No statistics were used to confirm/reject the hypotheses
Two characteristics specific to Hungarian articles:
Role of the MDs and specialists shifted to politicians over time
The pandemic and the countermeasures taken became the subject of internal
political debates (elections were held on the spring of 2010)

Opinions about the vaccination in Hungarian

media
Articles described the assumed (and not confirmed) side-effects of
the vaccination as frequently as the flu itself
People were unsure about the vaccination, and this was represented
and even strengthened in the media
Officials and MDs were not against the vaccination in public, but in
private the echoed the conspiracy theories
Phobia against the flu vaccination has decreased and hardly any
mass-resistance were experience in last years despite that they
contained the vaccine against H1N1, as they did in 2009/10

Thank you
Contact

molcsa@gmail.com
molnarcsaba.net
+36304558181
Skype: molcsa@outlook.com
linkedin.com/in/molnarcs