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

Abstract

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.

Knowledge, Attitude and Associated Factors of Monkeypox Infection Among Healthcare Workers in Injibara General Hospital, Northwest Ethiopia

“…Some health workers demonstrated a positive attitude 35,47 displaying a willingness to care for mpox patients and adherence to infection prevention and control measures. 27,37 However, other studies reported negative attitudes, such as fear, stigmatization, [48][49][50] and refusal to care for mpox patients. 51 Satisfactory attitude towards mpox was observed in less than a third (30.7%) of Lebanon healthcare workers.…”

Experiences of stigma among sexual minority men during the 2022 global mpox outbreak.

“…Although mpox can affect anyone, a notable characteristic of this outbreak was that it was overwhelmingly (i.e., more than 90%) concentrated among SMM (i.e., gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men; Philpott et al, 2022). Because of this demographic trend in mpox cases, media narratives and public health communications have, in some cases, uncritically associated mpox with SMM (Ju et al, 2023; UNAIDS, 2022). This has led to widespread concerns by researchers, public health officials, advocacy groups, and some members of the public that the outbreak would intensify the stigma faced by SMM (e.g., Banjar & Alaqeel, 2024; Bergman et al, 2022; Keum et al, 2023; Lee & Morling, 2022; Logie, 2022; März et al, 2022; Mazzagatti & Riva, 2022; Ng et al, 2022; Sah et al, 2022; UNAIDS, 2022).…”