SNAGA RATNE RETORIKE: METAFORE U HRVATSKOM JAVNOM DISKURSU

The use of metaphors often characterizes contemporary public discourses on various issues. By the same token, metaphors have been used extensively in the discourse on the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper examines the war metaphor as a framing and rhetorical device with distinct persuasive potency within the Croatian sociocultural context. The analysis shows that militaristic metaphors were omnipresent in the Croatian public discourse at the beginning of the pandemic. Their dual role, explanatory and persuasive, was instrumental in convincing the public to understand the pandemic and accept the restrictive mandates put in place.Metafore se često upotrebljavaju u suvremenim javnim diskursima o različitim temama, pa tako i u diskursu o pandemiji virusa COVID-19. Prema rezultatima dosadašnjih istraživanja (Bates 2020, Semino 2021, Wicke and Bolognesi 2020), u javnom diskursu o pandemiji koronavirusa najbrojnije su ratne metafore, koje su tema ovog rada. U radu su prikupljeni metaforički jezični izrazi iz izvorišne domene rata korišteni u dnevnim novinama za vrijeme prvog vala pandemije te je analiziran njihov retorički persuazivni potencijal u hrvatskom sociokulturnom kontekstu. Kvalitativna analiza korpusa temelji se na Charteris-Blackovom (2011) trodijelnom pristupu koji obuhvaća identifikaciju, interpretaciju i objašnjenje metafora. Cilj je utvrditi koji su se metaforički jezični izričaji iz domene rata koristili u hrvatskom javnom diskursu o pandemiji te objasniti zašto su se koristili i na koji način su oblikovali percepciju javnosti. Rezultati analize potvrdili su sveprisutnost ratnih metafora u hrvatskom javnom diskursu na početku pandemije koronavirusa. Njihova dvostruka uloga, kao sredstva za tumačenje i uvjeravanje, bila je ključna u oblikovanju mišljenja javnosti o pandemiji i prihvaćanju nametnutih restriktivnih mjera

Rat protiv ratne metafore: metaforički okviri u hrvatskome diskursu o pandemiji koronavirusa

Previous studies show that public discourse and social media discourse around the Covid-19 pandemic heavily use war framing, despite the fact that its misuse and inaptness to elaborate all aspects of the pandemic were already noted. This paper analyses conceptual metaphors in the Croatian (social) media discourse on the pandemic, focusing on the war metaphor. Using a specialized corpus of manually chosen relevant texts in Croatian, compiled for this purpose, we investigate how frequent war framing is in the Croatian media compared to alternative figurative framings. In a qualitative analysis, we outline the conceptual and inferential structure of the Covid-19 pandemic concept and discuss the structure, function, and (in)aptness of the war metaphor in pandemic circumstances. Additionally, by detecting other source frames used in this discourse, we offer other, possibly more apt (or less resisted) framing options – or a so-called metaphor menu – designed specifically for the Croatian language based on corpus data. We show that the Covid-19 pandemic is predominantly framed as combat or war in Croatian media and social media. Even though a ‘war’ on the war metaphor has been declared both by the media and research community, we show that the use of certain other source frames (e.g. the religion frame) may be even more dangerous than the war framing. The paper also discusses the aptness and omnipresence of the war metaphor, as well as its inaptness to refer to all aspects of this pandemic, concluding that it is rarely the type of metaphor that is harmful or inappropriate – it is rather the effect of the context and how it is used.U prethodnim studijama pokazalo se da se u javnome diskursu te na društvenim mrežama u velikoj mjeri rabi metaforički okvir rata kako bi se govorilo i mislilo o pandemiji koronavirusa, unatoč tomu što je pokazano kako je taj okvir potencijalno opasan i neprikladan za konceptualizaciju svih aspekata pandemije. Ovaj rad analizira konceptualne metafore u hrvatskome (društvenome) medijskome diskursu o ovoj pandemiji, s naglaskom na ratnoj metafori. Analizom zasnovanom na korpusu, koristeći se specijaliziranim korpusom ručno odabranih relevantnih tekstova na hrvatskome jeziku sastavljenim za potrebe ovoga istraživanja, pokazali smo koliko je ratna metafora doista česta u hrvatskim (društvenim) medijima u usporedbi s alternativnim figurativnim okvirima. Kvalitativnom analizom ocrtali smo konceptualnu i inferencijsku strukturu koncepta pandemije koronavirusa te analizirali strukturu, funkciju i (ne)prikladnost ratne metafore u pandemijskim okolnostima. Utvrđivanjem svih izvornih okvira potvrđenih u korpusu, nudimo i druge, možda prikladnije (ili manje kontroverzne) mogućnosti metaforičkoga uokvirivanja diskursa o koronavirusu – odnosno takozvani metaforički meni oblikovan posebno za hrvatski jezik na temelju podataka iz korpusa. Pokazali smo da se ova pandemija u hrvatskim medijima doista dominantno konceptualizira kao borba/rat. Unatoč činjenici da su ‘rat’ protiv ratne metafore proglasili i mediji i istraživačka zajednica, pokazali smo što ratnu metaforu ipak čini prikladnom i sveprisutnom, a po čemu je neprikladna u diskursu o ovoj pandemiji. Pokazali smo i da su neki drugi izvorni okviri (npr. religijski) potencijalno čak i opasniji od ratne metafore. No gotovo nikada sam tip metafore nije štetan ili neprimjeren, nego je to kontekst u kojem se metafora upotrebljava i način na koji se to čini

Framing COVID-19: How we conceptualize and discuss the pandemic on Twitter

Doctors and nurses in these weeks are busy in the trenches, fighting against a new invisible enemy: Covid-19. Cities are locked down and civilians are besieged in their own homes, to prevent the spreading of the virus. War-related terminology is commonly used to frame the discourse around epidemics and diseases. Arguably the discourse around the current epidemic will make use of war-related metaphors too,not only in public discourse and the media, but also in the tweets written by non-experts of mass communication. We hereby present an analysis of the discourse around #Covid-19, based on a corpus of 200k tweets posted on Twitter during March and April 2020. Using topic modelling we first analyze the topics around which the discourse can be classified. Then, we show that the WAR framing is used to talk about specific topics, such as the virus treatment, but not others, such as the effects of social distancing on the population. We then measure and compare the popularity of the WAR frame to three alternative figurative frames (MONSTER, STORM and TSUNAMI) and a literal frame used as control (FAMILY). The results show that while the FAMILY literal frame covers a wider portion of the corpus, among the figurative framings WAR is the most frequently used, and thus arguably the most conventional one. However, we conclude, this frame is not apt to elaborate the discourse around many aspects involved in the current situation. Therefore, we conclude, in line with previous suggestions, a plethora of framing options, or a metaphor menu, may facilitate the communication of various aspects involved in the Covid-19-related discourse on the social media, and thus support civilians in the expression of their feelings, opinions and ideas during the current pandemic.Comment: 41 pages, 6 figure

Knowing When and How to Fight: COVID-19 Between Viral Clearance and Immune Tolerance

ABSTRACTCOVID-19 is a complex disease involving immunological, vascular, and metabolic pathology caused by and consequences of beta-coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 infection. One may use Sun Tzu analogy of war to fight COVID-19 and to survive infection.  When enemy has not reached the shore, gathering much intelligence is key to know how the enemy moves and who would be the most vulnerable targets of enemy attacks. Physical distancing, massive nucleic acid testing, and identification of comorbidity may prepare for the incoming enemies. Physical distancing has helped to limit transmission of the virus that mainly due to close contacts with droplets coughed off infected individuals. Moreover, aerosolized virus particles may also contribute to spreading. Nucleic acid testing using real time PCR platform has been a diagnostic gold standard to identify infected individuals during early stage of infection. On the other hand, serological test to capture antibody against SARS-CoV-2 may be useful for immunosurveillance.  Discovery of human ACE2 (angiotensin converting enzyme) protein as an obligate partner of SARS-CoV-2 viral entry has provided insights to mechanisms of serious post-infection ramifications to individuals having comorbidities such as hypertension, diabetes or heart conditions.  When the enemy reaches ashore, thorough profiling of biomarkers involved in inflammation and coagulation (IL-6, lymphopenia, ground glass opacity, d-dimers, thrombocytopenia) may help predict disease progression and guide treatment strategy. While estimated 80% of infected individuals may recover on their own, the remaining 20% may require hospitalization and serious therapeutic intervention. Several clinical trials are underway such as repurposing existing drugs and evaluating efficacy of convalescence plasma therapy. Finally, vaccine development using genetic engineering may also help control the global spread if it is proven effective

The threat of cyberterrorism: Contemporary consequences and prescriptions

This study researches the varying threats that emanate from terrorists who carry their activity into the online arena. It examines several elements of this threat, including virtual to virtual attacks and threats to critical infrastructure that can be traced to online sources. It then reports on the methods that terrorists employ in using information technology such as the internet for propaganda and other communication purposes. It discusses how the United States government has responded to these problems, and concludes with recommendations for best practices

Empire Under the Microscope

This open access book considers science and empire, and the stories we tell ourselves about them. Using British Nobel laureate Ronald Ross (1857-1932) and his colleagues as access points to a wider professional culture, Empire Under the Microscope explores the cultural history of parasitology and its relationships with the literary and historical imagination between 1885 and 1935. Emilie Taylor-Pirie examines a wealth of archival material including medical lectures, scientific publications, popular biography, and personal and professional correspondence, alongside novels, poems, newspaper articles, and political speeches, to excavate the shared vocabularies of literature and medicine. She demonstrates how forms such as poetry and biography; genres such as imperial romance and detective fiction; and modes such as adventure and the Gothic, together informed how tropical diseases, their parasites, and their vectors, were understood in relation to race, gender, and nation. From Ancient Greece, to King Arthur’s Knights, to the detective work of Sherlock Holmes, parasitologists manipulated literary and historical forms of knowledge in their professional self-fashioning to create a modern mythology that has a visible legacy in relationships between science and society today

The meaning of living in the time of COVID-19. A large sample narrative inquiry

none4noThe spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a sudden, disruptive event which has strained international and local response capacity and distressed local populations. Different studies have focused on potential psychological distress resulting from the rupture of consolidated habits and routines related to the lockdown measures. Nevertheless, the subjective experience of individuals and the variations in the way of interpreting the lockdown measures remains substantially unexplored. Within the frame of Semiotic Cultural Psycho-social Theory (SCPT), the study pursued two main goals: first, to explore the Symbolic Universes (SU) through which Italian people represented the pandemic crisis and its meaning in their life; second, to examine how the interpretation of the crisis varies over societal segments with different socio-demographic characteristics and specific life challenges. An online survey was available during the Italian lockdown. Respondents were asked to write a passage about the meaning of living in the time of COVID-19. A total number of 1393 questionnaires (M = 35.47; DS =14.92; women: 64.8%; North Italy: 33%; Centre Italy: 27%; South Italy: 40%) were collected. The Automated Method for Content Analysis (ACASM) procedure was applied to the collected texts to detect the factorial dimensions underpinning (dis)similarities in the respondents’ discourses. Such factors were interpreted as the markers of latent dimensions of meanings defining the SU active in the sample. A set of chi square analysis allowed to explore the association between SU and respondents’ characteristics. Four SU were identified, labelled “Reconsider social priorities”, “Reconsider personal priorities”, “Live with emergency” and “Surviving a war”, characterised by the pertinentisation of two extremely basic issues: what the pandemic consists of (health emergency versus turning point) and its extent and impact (daily life versus world scenario). Significant associations were found between SU and all the respondents’ characteristics considered (sex, age, job status, job situation during lockdown and place of living). The findings will be discussed in the light of the role of the media and institutional scenario and psychosocial conditions in mediating the representation of the pandemic and in favoring or constraining the availability of symbolic resources underpinning people’s capability to address the crisis.openClaudia Venuleo; Tiziana Marinaci; Alessandro Gennaro; Arianna PalmieriVenuleo, Claudia; Marinaci, Tiziana; Gennaro, Alessandro; Palmieri, Ariann

Framing pandemic news. Empirical research on Covid-19 representation in the Italian TV news

The article contributes to the vast literature on the media representation of Covid-19, by exposing the results of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of Covid-19 media coverage in Italy, run on the full archive of prime-time TV news – Tg1, Tg2, Tg3, Tg4, Tg5, Studio Aperto, Tg La7 – between February 28, 2020, and February 27, 2021. All verbal contents of TV news have been analyzed, based on a sample of 2,555 news shows and 14,304 news stories related to the epidemic, for a total of 1.6 million words. By applying the media framing models, we realized a two-step work: a mapping of TV coverage across one year; and an in-depth investigation on the most relevant keywords, gathering and variant. The main results show how the different Italian television news broadcast the pandemic "waves", paying attention to issues considered as emergencies. Through a cluster analysis, we found some recurring and absent narratives of the media representation on Covid19. Along with the reflection on the framing of the pandemic, we will come out with some insights into the blaming strategies put in motion by the TV news

Foreign bodies: public health and the regulation of racialized threats to empire and the citizen body

Who can truly be American? In the United States, the storybook citizen is conceived as a young, white, able-bodied, heterosexual, productive male. The menace of racialized contagion is integral to preserving this fiction and a prominent co-author of this work is the public health sector. Contagion is often articulated as a threat to the empire and to the citizenry and, invested with institutional authority, public health delineates which bodies are "fit" to constitute the body politic. Despite claims of universality, public health policies, recommendations and regulations are informed by historically-specific sociocultural beliefs about race, class, gender and sexuality. This thesis investigates how public health informs the constitution of and responses to racialized contagion. I argue that, in the American context, such formulations can be traced to the late nineteenth century when public health was bolstered by the American Civil War and came to prominence in a society being dynamically reshaped by emancipation, immigration and urbanization. For this project, I conduct a discourse analysis of historically-specific accounts of disease, specifically leprosy (and to a lesser extent syphilis) related to nineteenth century Chinese immigrants and Haitians as a “risk group” for HIV/AIDS at the close of the twentieth century to examine the ways in which public health discourses that serve to exclude certain populations from the body politic (do not) persist. Through doing so, I intend to determine whether there is a pattern to the logics of racialized exclusion that has existed in public health since its inception. In short, do the contours of whiteness always require the construction of a diseased brown boogeyman and, if so, how is this danger constructed in the American context

Bio+Terror: Science, Security, Simulation

The United States government has spent more than $125 billion since 2001 to prepare the nation for bioterrorism. This dissertation examines the emergence of bioterrorism as a credible threat in the contemporary moment, considering how the preparedness practices of the security state constitute new biopolitical formations. To explore how changing ways of knowing disease and risk are reshaping communities, this multi-sited study investigates the material outcomes of biosecurity in people\u27s lives. It shows how complex histories of disease and terror are remade in the modern age to bring about new spaces and forms of biological citizenship.Through interview, observation and detailed historical research, this research considers three sites where bioterrorism is reshaping public life. At Montana\u27s Rocky Mountain Laboratory, the community protest of the first high-security Biosafety Level-4 facility built in the 21st century exemplifies how public fear of microbes reshapes laboratory spaces and constructs environmental geographies around new conceptions of life, risk, and disease. The creation and implementation of new biopreparedness programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta show how the alliance of public health practices with the nation\u27s security complex brings a new level of militarism to everyday practices of health and wellness. Finally, a case study of bioterrorism simulation exercises in New Mexico considers how the public rehearsal of terrorism events creates a perpetual state of emergency as governments and citizens publicly perform their responses to a crisis.By studying the technoscientific extensions of war in the modern age, this research questions how the care-giving acts of governance have been militarized and how enlisting the bioscience industry in the War on Terror is changing societal norms of knowing life, death, nature, and disease, grounded in these re-articulations of life itself. The emerging spaces and economies of terrorism preparedness exemplify how the fusion of new genomic biologies with national security practices brings material change to the spaces where people live and work. This research aims to convince scholars as well as policymakers and activists that the ways in which bioterrorism has been produced have consequences in how people live