No abstract

In this article, we present a qualitative study of the Norwegian print news coverage of the 2009 pandemic. In initial research, we found fear to be a notable aspect of the coverage. In studying a relevant subsample in-depth, we discovered that, although there was no sound basis on which to make conclusions about what effects the coverage was having on the public, various actors—including media themselves—came on the mediated scene to express fears that it would create fear and panic. We argue that the mediation of the pandemic can hence be seen as a peculiar case of the “third person effect,” that is, the phenomenon that people tend to believe that other people are more severely influenced by the mass media than what they believe themselves to be. This, we suggest, has some implications for how we think about communication in future pandemics and other crises.

Pandemics are potentially very destructive phenomena, and for that reason, they both fascinate and frighten us. But because they might also turn out to be relatively mild, pandemics often become sites of contestation and conflict. Perhaps the most important characteristic of these diseases, then, is the fact that they are shot through with uncertainty. While they are only potentially destructive, they necessarily involve a great degree of uncertainty-and this is what makes the task of staging a collective response to pandemics such a challenge. In this introduction, we argue that a broader set of disciplines need to be engaged in the study of pandemics and other public health crises in order to prepare society for future pandemic events.

In this article, our starting point is that people who are plagued by the so-called meat paradox must find ways of making meat consumption safe from the realities of meat production. They do this by way of various mechanisms of denial, which obfuscate contemporary industrial meat production. We focus on how advertisements become one notable vehicle of such denial, and select three examples for close reading. Focusing on the rhetorical techniques employed in three Norwegian ads for meat and how they mediate meat production to consumers, we argue that these ads all present an image of meat producers as progressive and caring proponents of animal welfare. This leads us to suggest that they exemplify a variant of greenwashing that we dub “welfare washing”—the main message of which is to keep calm and carry on consuming meat.

Learning and accountability are customarily defined as ‘the dual purpose’ of development aid evaluation, yet this notion is contested. Based on an overview of the existing literature, we identify four ideal type positions in this debate: (1) accountability and learning are complementary objectives, (2) there is a reconcilable tension, (3) there are problematic trade-offs and (4) the two are irreconcilable. Drawing on empirical evidence from Sweden and Norway relating to evaluation processes, evaluation reports and evaluation systems within the sector of development aid, we conclude that pursuing this dual purpose in practice involves trade-offs which need to be recognised. We end with implications for aid evaluation policy and practice.