Author
Listed:
- Eva M. Krockow
- Meghann Jones
- Carolyn Tarrant
- Marc Mendelson
- Stephen J. Flusberg
Abstract
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses an existential threat to humanity, yet public awareness remains low. An underexplored tool for AMR risk communication is metaphor. By inviting a comparison between abstract and familiar concepts, metaphors can make complex health information more accessible. However, metaphor use in the context of AMR has been haphazard and remains poorly understood. We address this issue by providing an integrative content analysis of metaphor use in global, English-language, public AMR discourse. Four types of public sources were searched: (1) websites of 71 non-profit organisations, (2) national AMR action plans from 84 countries, (3) 819 international newspaper articles and (4) 2,616 social media posts. Across all sources, 2,149 metaphors excerpts were extracted. Qualitative content analysis identified 41 distinct metaphor themes, but 75% of metaphors fell into one of four themes: ‘War against resistance, infections and microbes’, ‘Heroes and villains of resistance’, ‘Post-antibiotic apocalypse and looming crisis of AMR’, and ‘Silent, creeping threat of AMR’. All key themes are inapt or theoretically problematic by painting a misleading picture of a finite struggle between good and evil, which does not match the ecological reality of a continuously evolving challenge. Furthermore, most existing metaphors are highly conventional and emotive. They aim to raise general awareness about AMR without conferring specific knowledge. Our findings call for an urgent re-framing. Media, policy makers and health officials should choose theoretically informed, apt and novel explanatory metaphors that are specific to the context of AMR and challenge public misunderstandings with the potential to prompt behaviour change.
Suggested Citation
Eva M. Krockow & Meghann Jones & Carolyn Tarrant & Marc Mendelson & Stephen J. Flusberg, 2024.
"Risk communication about antimicrobial resistance: a content analysis of metaphor use in global public discourse,"
Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(12), pages 1605-1622, December.
Handle:
RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:27:y:2024:i:12:p:1605-1622
DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2025.2485044
Download full text from publisher
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:27:y:2024:i:12:p:1605-1622. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJRR20 .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.