Rhetoric of a Global Epidemic: Transcultural Communication about SARS

Conclusion: Transcultural Communication and Rhetoric about Global Epidemics

239 Conclusion: Transcultural Communication and Rhetoric about Global Epidemics This book contributes to studies of transcultural communication and the rhetoric of global epidemics through nuanced investigation of discourses about SARS, the first emerging epidemic in the new millennium. It proposes and applies a theoretical framework of transcultural communication to study communication about global events in their full complexity. Through thick description and analysis, I explore vastly different cultural sites where international , national, institutional, extra-institutional, and transcultural actors communicated about SARS and negotiated about possible ways to manage its accompanying risks. As viral discourses circulated in global media, SARS was rhetorically transformed from a medical epidemic into epidemics of anti-communist and anti-immigration ideologies, infrastructural inadequacy , and technological backwardness. With different magnitudes of local outbreaks, countries and regions, such as the United States, China, Canada, Singapore, and Hong Kong, took unique and radically localized approaches to manage local SARS risks. Whereas some resorted to Confucian values and patriotism for mass mobilization purposes, others turned to modern technologies and economic rationality to reduce both local transmission and economic losses. This concluding chapter elaborates on my contributions to transcultural communication, to the study of global risks, to professional communication and pedagogies, and to the rhetoric of global epidemics. Building a Theory of Transcultural Risk Analysis With health risks, such as SARS, developing on a global scale, the risk analysis of global epidemics poses a great challenge to existing risk communication theories, whose explanatory power is severely limited by a narrow focus on industrial practices and institutional issues within single cultures in the North American context. This study of transcultural risk management of SARS shows the indeterminable and uncontrollable nature of global risks 240 Conclusion and the contestation surrounding risk definitions among national, international , institutional, and extra-institutional actors. My proposed theoretical framework of transcultural communication serves as a useful tool for global risk analysis because of its attention to transcultural forces, global flows, power dynamics, knowledge production and negotiations and impacts of local contexts on risk communication practices. Besides the theoretical framework of transcultural risk analysis, this project also offers insight for the study of risk communication in non-Western cultures with a critical contextualized approach. A critical contextualized approach considers the investigation of power relations, knowledge-making practices, and local cultures and contexts essential for the study of transcultural risk communication practices in non-Western cultures. Through critical contextualized analysis, my study of the 2009 H1N1 flu explains not only why Asian countries took extremely rigorous preventive measures but also what contributed to the different risk management approaches taken by the United States and by China. Further, my investigation of informal participatory risk communication analyzes the roles that alternative media can play amid official silence, as in the case of SARS, or in confusing global risk politics, as in the case of H1N1 flu. Extra-institutional risk communication processes operated differently in relation to SARS and the H1N1 flu, with the former relying more on guerrilla media and the latter operating mainly via the Internet. In 2003, transcultural alternative media served as the platform for practitioners with access to insider information to send out unauthorized and unverified risk messages to the general public that, in turn, challenged the official containment narrative. In 2009, transnational virtual communities of mainlanders and overseas Chinese negotiated about best risk management approaches to prevent the import of the H1N1 flu virus by overseas returnees. Enraged mainlanders activated human flesh searches to dig out the identities of the first few cases and to explore ways to discipline transnational bodies as potential virus carriers. In response, overseas Chinese responded to online discrimination and stigmatization by proposing a bottom-up, self-imposed travel advisory that urged all overseas Chinese either to postpone their travel plans or to quarantine themselves at home upon their return to China. In both epidemics , concerned citizens’ tactical use of alternative media produced profound changes in global risk management processes and greatly influenced the contours of global risk politics surrounding SARS and H1N1 flu. 241 Transcultural Communication and Rhetoric Pedagogical Implications for Professional Communication As demonstrated by this book, many boundaries currently taught in professional communication pedagogy no longer hold true in our contemporary globalized and digitally connected world. The three boundaries discussed below separate industry and academia, mainstream media and alternative media, and nation-states and transnational connectivities. Dismantling the Boundary between Industry, Academia The field has witnessed an ongoing argument...