Rhetoric of a Global Epidemic: Transcultural Communication about SARS

2. Risk Communication about an Emerging Epidemic in Guangdong, China

65 2 Risk Communication about an Emerging Epidemic in Guangdong, China How can we study health risk communication about emerging global epidemics in non-Western countries when the urgent need to acquire preliminary understanding about the new epidemics is further complicated by media control and self-censorship? With avian flu posing a catastrophic pandemic threat capable of breaking out in any part of the world, the study of global risk communication practices, particularly that of risk communication practices in non-Western cultures, becomes increasingly important. Only with the understanding of various risk communication practices can the global community collaborate more effectively in pandemic outbreaks. Such studies help to identify gaps in and possible ways to expand existing risk communication theories. This chapter examines the way risk communication operated during the initial stage of SARS in its origin, the Guangdong Province, from November 2002 to February 2003, right before SARS grew from a regional epidemic into a global one. Concerned with the communication practices between experts and the public, most risk communication theories focus on the interaction among industry, scientists, technical communicators, interest groups, and the public (Grabill and Simmons; Leiss and Powell; for a comprehensive review of risk communication theories, see Simmons). William Leiss and Douglas Powell, for example, define risk communication as “the process of exchanges about how best to assess and manage risks among academics, regulatory practitioners , interest groups, and the general public” (33). Risk communication practices surrounding SARS in Guangdong, China, however, pose questions that existing risk communication theories neglect or cannot address. Some such issues include the relative absence of interest groups or technical communicators as a specialized profession; strong governmental intervention; the simultaneously ongoing processes of risk assessment and risk communication as attempts to understand the unknown and spreading epidemic; the use of two distinct communicative channels, that is, partial disclosure1 in 66 Risk Communication about an Epidemic publicly released governmental discourses in the media and full disclosure in classified governmental discourses; and the creation of the official “no risk” narrative through the use of cooption, selective coverage, and partial censorship. Specifically, this chapter addresses the following questions: 1. How did risk communication practices in non-Western cultures differ from those in Western countries, such as the United States and Great Britain? 2. How did rhetoric operate to facilitate the acceptance of the official “no risk” narrative amid uncertainty and confusion about the emerging epidemic of SARS? 3. What implications does the study of health risk communication about SARS in China have for the theory building of global risk communication? This chapter examines the way health risk communication about SARS operated in the media and in governmental institutions amid uncertainty and fear at the early stage of SARS. First is a review of the issue of information vacuum in risk communication and the possible impacts of selective censorship on the creation of less-visible risk vacuums and the false impression of honest reporting. What follows is a historical review of the development of the regional SARS outbreak. My study of these risk communication processes reveals the existence of two distinct and noninteracting channels of risk communication: the mass media claiming that the SARS outbreak was under control in order to prevent mass panic and the classified governmental discourses addressing the severity of the local outbreak and coordinating institutional efforts to fight against SARS and its social side effects of panic buying, inflation, and economic losses.2 Using enthymemic analysis, the chapter examines the way the official rhetoric of “SARS is under control” operated in the regional media. Then investigated are the roles that co-opted expert discourses, reviews, and critical commentaries played in convincing the public that the local epidemic was truly under control. The next section explores the heightened sense of uncertainty, urgency, and action demonstrated in classified governmental discourses and the real-time risk communication deployed among the government, medical institutions , and regional media. The chapter concludes by proposing a critical contextualized model to study risk communication practices in non-Western countries that pays close attention to local power relations, material 67 Risk Communication about an Epidemic conditions, and values and beliefs instead of oversimplifying risk communication as an easily abstractable and universal practice across cultures. My analysis calls attention to the larger issues of culture, institutions, power, and knowledge in global risk politics. It also shows how professionals, including journalists and practitioners, played the dual role of subject-area experts...