Forensic rhetoric
Covid-19, the forum and the boundaries of healthcare evidence
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12692082 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Houston Jones (0000-0001-9186-6114, Languages, Cultures & Visual Studies, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 553-562 |
| Publication date | 2023-08-17 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Medical Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1468-215X • E-ISSN: 1473-4265 |
| Publisher | BMJ (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1136/medhum-2023-012609 |
| PMID | 37591696 |
| OpenAlex | W4385945390 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 44 |
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp focus the shifting role of healthcare evidence in public health presentations. This article investigates the rhetoric of those presentations as a phenomenon indicating both the commitment to evidence-based public health messaging and its political loading in three interlinked case studies: computer-generated imagery ; 'podium' presentation and the NSO Fleming leak of COVID-19 contact tracing data. The pandemic has seen healthcare evidence attain ever-greater visibility in public forums, and those forums have themselves undergone rapid transformation. 'Podium' presentations such as press conferences have featured colourful imagery, and the manifold visualisations of SARS-CoV-2 which have accompanied television broadcasts and web pages display an insistent internal rhetoric. I analyse both forms of rhetoric for what they say about the 'forensic' moment created by COVID-19, and evaluate each in relation to Weizman's conception of the forum, which enables both 'frontstage' corporate and governmental image-building and public scrutiny. This paper evaluates the politics of the presentational strategies which have arisen around COVID-19 and the ethical potential of the forum
Health care · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Presentation (obstetrics · Public health · Public relations · Rhetoric · Scrutiny · Sociology · Global Security and Public Health · Law · Media Studies and Communication · Medicine · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Nursing
Forensic Architecture
Vision, Race, and Modernity
The Cummings effect
Covid-19
The epic battle against coronavirus misinformation and conspiracy theories
Poverty, inequality and Covid-19
Illness as Narrative
Critical discourse analysis of political press conferences
British government communication during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic
‘Building a Ship while Sailing It.’ Epistemic Humility and the Temporality of Non-knowledge in Political Decision-making on Covid-19
How We Escape Capture by the “War” Metaphor for Covid-19
Framing the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic
Metaphors of Brexit
Anti-science Misinformation and Conspiracies
Lessons from the UK’s handling of Covid-19 for the future of scientific advice to government
A virus as an icon
Visualizing the Virus
Photography and the Limits of National Identity
The limits of narrative
Recalibrating pandemic risk leadership
The Politics of Blaming
How Do We See Covid-19? Visual Iconographies of Racial Contagion
The Imperative Origins of Covid-19
Covid-19 and Health Code
The Prophetic Faculty of Epidemic Photography
| Citations per year | 0.67 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2024 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |