Degrading Bodies in Pandemic Times: Politicizing Cruelty During the COVID-19 and Obesity Crises

Monaghan, Lee F.

doi:10.1177/01968599211043403

Cited by 15 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(42 reference statements)

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“…Overall, in the scientific literature, public health pronouncements, and wider discourse, narratives around personal responsibility and the stigmatization of fat bodies have had significant uptake (Monaghan, 2021 ). However, there has also been resistance to these narratives in varying degrees: some have attempted to move away from personal responsibility and blame while maintaining that obesity is an inherently risky biological category, whilst others have taken up structural fatphobia as a cause of disparities in the burden of Covid-19.…”

Section: Fatness and Health Disparities In The Context Of Covid-19mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although some social sciences and humanities scholarship has emerged that attends to structural fat discrimination in the context of Covid-19 (Bessey & Brady, 2021 ; McPhail & Orsini, 2021 ; Monaghan, 2021 ; Pausé et al, 2021a , 2021b ), overall, this narrative of structural fat discrimination has received far less attention than those which hold onto fatness as a biological category, whether that be coupled with personal responsibility and blame or highlighting the negative effects of weight stigma.…”

Section: Fatness and Health Disparities In The Context Of Covid-19mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Contrasting Narratives of Race and Fatness in Covid-19

Chellappoo

2021

HPLS

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The slogan that ‘the virus doesn’t discriminate’ has been belied by the emergence of stark and persistent disparities in rates of infection, hospitalisation, and death from Covid-19 between various social groups. I focus on two groups that have been disproportionately affected, and that have been constructed or designated as particularly ‘at-risk’ during the Covid-19 pandemic: racial or ethnic minorities and fat people. I trace the range of narratives that have arisen in the context of explaining these disparities, in both the scientific literature and wider expert and public discourse. I show that the scientific and public narratives around these groups have differed significantly, revealing contested and competing conceptions of the basis of these categories themselves. These different conceptions have important impacts on the kinds of interventions that become possible or desirable. I show that in the case of racial or ethnic disparities, genetic narratives have been combatted by a strong focus on structural racism as a driver of pandemic inequalities. However, in the case of fatness, individualising and stigmatising narratives have dominated discussions. I suggest that, given racial or ethnic differences in prevalence of fatness, and scholarship casting anti-fatness as historically racialised, the stigmatisation of fatness disproportionately affects racial or ethnic minorities in terms of placing individual blame or responsibility for the increased burden of Covid-19 on these groups. Despite widespread acknowledgement of the role of structural racism in driving racial inequalities in the burden of Covid-19, anti-obesity rhetoric and research provides a ‘backdoor’ to placing blame on individuals from racial minorities.

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Section: Fatness and Health Disparities In The Context Of Covid-19mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Fatness and Health Disparities In The Context Of Covid-19mentioning

confidence: 99%

Contrasting Narratives of Race and Fatness in Covid-19

Chellappoo

2021

HPLS

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“…Algunos estudios recientes sugieren que, con motivo de la pandemia por COVID-19, los mensajes difundidos por los medios acentuaron la representación de estigmatización y discriminación por sobrepeso (Flint, 2020;Monaghan, 2021;Stewart y Ogden, 2022), ya que casi desde el principio de la pandemia se asoció un mayor índice de masa corporal con un riesgo más elevado de enfermedad grave y muerte por coronavirus. En una situación pandémica que ya de por sí aumentó de forma generalizada la ansiedad entre la población, esta asociación problematizó aún más el sobrepeso y contribuyó a aumentar la ansiedad entre las personas con obesidad en mayor medida que entre el resto.…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

Estigmatización social en el tratamiento informativo de la obesidad en la prensa española durante la pandemia

Markina

Bilbao²,

Castillo³

2023

RLCS

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Introducción: El presente estudio analiza el tratamiento de la obesidad en la prensa española durante el primer año de la pandemia de COVID-19, con el objetivo de conocer cómo se enmarcaron sus informaciones sobre este tema. Metodología: Mediante la metodología del análisis de contenido y con la teoría del framing como referencia, se estudiaron 350 informaciones acerca de obesidad y COVID-19 publicadas en las ediciones digitales de los cuatro diarios españoles impresos de información general más leídos en el año 2020: El País, El Mundo, La Vanguardia y Abc. Resultados: En los contenidos que protagoniza la obesidad prima el encuadre de responsabilidad individual, que atribuye la causa de la obesidad a la responsabilidad individual y que difunde la idea de que tener sobrepeso es una elección personal. Por el contrario, en aquellos centrados en la COVID-19 predomina el encuadre de responsabilidad colectiva. También se utiliza, aunque de manera minoritaria, lenguaje ofensivo e imágenes que reflejan de forma negativa a personas con obesidad. Discusión: Los medios de comunicación pueden influir en las creencias y actitudes de su audiencia, así como en la toma de decisiones sobre salud. Por ello, la forma en que los medios representan la obesidad es importante para aumentar o reducir la estigmatización hacia las personas que la sufren. Conclusiones: La narrativa que atribuye la causa de la obesidad a la responsabilidad individual fomenta el aumento del estigma social y refuerza los estereotipos basados en el peso, por lo que debería evitarse en los medios de comunicación.

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“…Historical experience has shown that certain stigma narratives always emerge in the initial stages of outbreaks [ 17 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 ]. Stigma is often associated with the use of specific media framing strategies [ 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 ]. In the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, prejudice against Chinese and Asian people has proliferated in American society [ 1 , 23 , 28 , 33 , 34 ] as online media have favored biased news frames to label China as the predominant “source” of the coronavirus.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stigmatizing Monkeypox and COVID-19: A Comparative Framing Study of The Washington Post’s Online News

Sannusi

Mohamad

2023

IJERPH

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Background: Stigma relating to health can result in a broad range of vulnerabilities and risks for patients and healthcare providers. The media play a role in people’s understanding of health, and stigma is socially constructed through many communication channels, including media framing. Recent health issues affected by stigma include monkeypox and COVID-19. Objectives: This research aimed to examine how The Washington Post (WP) framed the stigma around monkeypox and COVID-19. Guided by framing theory and stigma theory, online news coverage of monkeypox and COVID-19 was analyzed to understand the construction of social stigma through media frames. Methods: This research used qualitative content analysis to compare news framings in The Washington Post’s online news coverage of monkeypox and COVID-19. Results: Using endemic, reassurance, and sexual-transmission frames, The Washington Post predominantly defined Africa as the source of monkeypox outbreaks, indirectly labeled gays as a specific group more likely to be infected with monkeypox, and emphasized that there was no need to worry about the spread of the monkeypox virus. In its COVID-19 coverage, The Washington Post adopted endemic and panic frames to describe China as the source of the coronavirus and to construct an image of panic regarding the spread of the virus. Conclusions: These stigma discourses are essentially manifestations of racism, xenophobia, and sexism in public health issues. This research confirms that the media reinforces the stigma phenomenon in relation to health through framing and provides suggestions for the media to mitigate this issue from a framing perspective.

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Degrading Bodies in Pandemic Times: Politicizing Cruelty During the COVID-19 and Obesity Crises

Cited by 15 publications

References 36 publications

Contrasting Narratives of Race and Fatness in Covid-19

Contrasting Narratives of Race and Fatness in Covid-19

Estigmatización social en el tratamiento informativo de la obesidad en la prensa española durante la pandemia

Stigmatizing Monkeypox and COVID-19: A Comparative Framing Study of The Washington Post’s Online News

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