Cultures of Safety: Media Framing of Hospital Cultures of Safety in the 2014 Ground Zero Ebola Patient in the US

• In Event: Media and Message Effects: High Density Panel in Health Communication

Abstract

This study examines mediated communication about safety practices that constitute healthcare safety cultures. To do so, this study analyzes print, television coverage, and Centers for Disease Control communication about the Liberian patient who entered Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on September 26th and returned two days later on September 28th before being diagnosed with Ebola and quarantined. Of particular interest is how media frame safety culture of healthcare when it is threatened by infectious disease controls. Ebola provides a timely case for studying public health concerns related to healthcare safety. Using this media event, media framing methods (Entman, 1991, 1993; Gamson, 1996; Miller & Riechert, 2001) were applied to a sampling of news outlets from September 26, 2014 through October 26, 2014: print stories in the New York Times and Dallas Morning News; transcripts of the three major news networks ABC, NBC, and CBS; and official CDC messages posted online.

Authors

• Elizabeth L. Spradley, Stephen F. Austin State University

• R. Tyler Spradley, Stephen F. Austin State University