Only a few years before the Covid-19 pandemic stroke the globe in 2020 another pandemic had taken its toll. In 2009/10, the swine flu or H1N1 pandemic got hold of (not only) Europe. After a year of circulation, it globally led to approximately 284.500 respiratory and cardiovascular deaths (Dawood, Iuliano, Reed, et al. 2012). However, during the pandemic a game-changer was already introduced in 2009: vaccines.
As we have seen over the last few years, vaccines have become a hot topic in newspaper coverage – this is also true for the vaccines against swine flu presented in 2009. In my short talk, I will present different newspaper articles published in Austria, Great Britain, and Serbia covering the period after the introduction of the swine flu vaccine in 2009/10. Based on them, I want to point out the arguments made by the authors and the respective medium to highlight how public debates about vaccines were led and to detangle them.
In my session, students will get into contact with content analysis and learn how to extract the argumentative framework of publicly led debates on public health measurements. Also, we will discuss the arguments brought forward in the respective newspapers and compare them to one another along the lines of national differences or similarities. Consequently, one aim is to show what historical (as part of the social) sciences can do in regard to public health (debates). Finally, my session also contributes to a critical reflection on how a scientific development – the vaccine – as part of “the science” is medialized. In this regard, my notion of “science” is based on Peter Weingart´s notion of “science of public” (“Wissenschaft der Öffentlichkeit”), who hypothesizes an everchanging science in the media spotlight based on the media´s reaction to public expectations. (Weingart 2005). Thus, the final aim is to show how newspaper articles can affect the notion of a scientific tool – the vaccine.
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