“On Symbols and Scripts: The Politics of the American COVID-19 Response”
Black Lives Matter Plaza - October 3, 2020
Posted in Scholarship | Tagged Emily Mendenhall, Scholarship 2021
Emily Mendenhall and her co-authors argue that, to unravel the American COVID-19 crisis —and to craft effective responses—, a more sophisticated understanding of the political culture of public health crises is needed. According to the researchers, the social processes of meaning-making help explain the evolution of increasingly partisan public health discourse regarding topics like masking and institutional trust. They consider how and why certain issues gain political valence, and what opportunities certain acts of politicization provide in shifting public discourse.