2016 CCCC Best Book Award in Technical and Scientific Communication
In the past ten years, we have seen great changes in the ways government
organizations and media respond to and report on emerging global
epidemics. The first outbreak to garner such attention was SARS (severe
acute respiratory syndrome). In Rhetoric of a Global Epidemic, Huiling
Ding uses SARS to explore how various cultures and communities made
sense of the epidemic and communicated about it. She also investigates
the way knowledge production and legitimation operate in global
epidemics, the roles that professionals and professional communicators,
as well as individual citizens, play in the communication process,
points of contention within these processes, and possible entry points
for ethical and civic intervention.
Focusing on the rhetorical interactions among the World Health
Organization, the United States, China, and Canada, Rhetoric of a
Global Epidemic investigates official communication and community
grassroots risk tactics employed during the SARS outbreak. It consists
of four historical cases, which examine the transcultural risk
communication about SARS in different geopolitical regions at different
stages. The first two cases deal with risk communication practices at
the early stage of the SARS epidemic when it originated in southern
China. The last two cases move to transcultural rhetorical networks
surrounding SARS.
With such threats as SARS, avian flu, and swine flu capturing the public
imagination and prompting transnational public health preparedness
efforts, the need for a rhetoric of global epidemics has never been
greater. Government leaders, public health officials, health care
professionals, journalists, and activists can learn how to more
effectively craft and manage transcultural risk communication from
Ding's examination of the complex and varied modes of communication
around SARS. In addition to offering a detailed case study, Rhetoric of
a Global Epidemic provides a critical methodology that professional
communicators can use in their investigations of epidemics and details
approaches to facilitating more open, participatory risk communication
at all levels.