Dissertations and Theses @ UNI
Availability
Open Access Thesis
Keywords
Epidemics; Epidemics; H1N1 influenza; Public health--Communication systems; Academic theses;
Abstract
In April, 2009 a mysterious illness started to spread from Mexico City into the United States and quickly through out the rest of the world. Initially known as Swine Flu, it was quickly became known by its scientific name novel H 1 N 1. The H 1 N 1 pandemic is of particular note because of the rapid spread throughout the world. Additionally, the H 1 N 1 pandemic provides a way to study organizational responses during a health pandemic. Previous literature has explored how organizations have responded during pandemics, but have not examined pandemics from an organizational level. This thesis, using Glaser and Strauss (1967) grounded theory for coding data, analyzes 15 H 1 N 1 public and private facing documents from the Minnesota Department of Health and a local hospital during the first six months of the H 1 N 1 pandemic. In order to examine how medical dominance is presented to different groups the documents were divided by their intended audiences. The analysis of the H 1 N 1 documents found four public facing themes (patient education, staying home, reassurance, and hospital invisibility) as well as four private facing themes (compliance, patient classification, vaccinations, and employee education). A portion of the thesis is dedicated to discussion the implications of the themes from the documents and provides a discussion on pandemics and organizational planning. Additionally, I argue how public and private facing documents convey specific messages to their audiences helps expand the use of medical dominance throughout the pandemic. This study concludes that during pandemics. health organizations are elevated to a level of authority that both calms and controls the actions and beliefs of the general public, and crisis communication specialists must work diligently to protect the safety of the people they serve.
Year of Submission
2011
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Department of Communication Studies
First Advisor
Jayne Morgan-Witte
Second Advisor
Tom Hall
Third Advisor
April Chatham-Carpenter
Date Original
2011
Object Description
1 PDF file (113 leaves)
Copyright
©2011 Ian Patrick Hopkins
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Hopkins, Ian Patrick, "Communicating During a Crisis: An Analysis of H1N1 Documents" (2011). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 2950.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/2950
Comments
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