Outbreak or Epidemic? How Obama's Language Choice Transformed the Ebola Outbreak Into an Epidemic.
Our aim was to examine in what terms leading newspapers' online sites described the current Ebola crisis.



We employed a quantitative content analysis of terms attributed to Ebola. We found and analyzed 582 articles published between March 23 and September 30, 2014, on the online websites of 3 newspapers: The New York Times, Daily Mail, and Ynet. Our theoretical framework drew from the fields of health communication and emerging infectious disease communication, including such concepts as framing media literacy, risk signatures, and mental models.



We found that outbreak and epidemic were used interchangeably in the articles. From September 16, 2014, onward, epidemic predominated, corresponding to when President Barack Obama explicitly referred to Ebola as an epidemic. Prior to Obama's speech, 86.8% of the articles (323) used the term outbreak and only 8.6% (32) used the term epidemic. Subsequently, both terms were used almost the same amount: 53.8% of the articles (113) used the term outbreak and 53.3% (112) used the term epidemic.



Effective communication is crucial during public health emergencies such as Ebola, because language framing affects the decision-making process of social judgments and actions. The choice of one term (outbreak) over another (epidemic) can create different conceptualizations of the disease, thereby influencing the risk signature. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2016;10:669-673).
1School of Public Health,University of Haifa,Haifa,Israel.
Anat
A
Gesser-Edelsburg
1School of Public Health,University of Haifa,Haifa,Israel.
Yaffa
Y
Shir-Raz
2Department of Communication,University of Haifa,Haifa,Israel.
Oshrat Sassoni
OS
Bar-Lev
3Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health,Bethesda,Maryland.
James J
JJ
James
1School of Public Health,University of Haifa,Haifa,Israel.
Manfred S
MS
Green
D058872:Epidemics / Q000941:ethics*; D058015:Health Communication / Q000639:trends*; D019142:Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D011057:Politics; D011634:Public Health / Q000379:methods; D012660:Semantics
EID communication; Ebola; content analysis; framing affect; outbreak and epidemic