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As well as a site of politics and public health action, the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa has been a focus of media representations. This paper examines print media narratives around border control in relation to Ebola in the UK, the USA and Australia from the start of the epidemic to May 2015. It shows that Ebola became mobilised as a frame through which domestic politics could be discussed. The disease was transformed from a problem for West Africa to a problem for the West. The context of West Africa and affected populations was homogenised and hidden. The focus of reporting centred upon domestic political actions and more local sources of threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2003, avian influenza has recently spread around the world sparking fears of a potential pandemic. As a result of this, a range of explanations and expectations surrounding the phenomenon were generated. Such social representations of disease depict the issue under discussion and frame reactions to the event. This paper explores the social representations surrounding avian influenza in Australia. Methodologically, a textual analysis of media and government documents was conducted in order to uncover the social representations implicit in these accounts. This demonstrated a symbolic framing of avian influenza with reference to the Spanish Influenza pandemic (1918). Analytically, the study draws upon the concepts of social representations from Durkheim and of risk and symbolic risk in the work of Beck. Overall, it is argued that the framing of avian influenza as a risk, mediated through the collective memory of Spanish Influenza, characterised the nature of the social representations surrounding the phenomenon. This resulted in the production of symbolic solutions to the threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]