Journal articles on the topic 'Epidemics – Press coverage'

The article makes an attempt to elucidate the specificity of coverage of epidemics, specifically the typhus epidemic in the Eastern Galicia during 1919–1920s in the Ukrainian-language interwar press. The object of the research is the Ukrainian mainstream press of Galicia (the social-democratic newspaper Vpered (Lviv) and the Ukrainian émigré press in the USA (the newspaper Svoboda (Jersey City). The study aims to elucidate peculiarities of epidemic communications in the editorial bent of the Ukrainian press, in particular narratives, functional direction, and approaches to the typhus epidemic coverage in different print media. The Research Methodology: bibliographical heuristics, logical methods, functional analysis, diachronic comparative analysis, narrative configuration in qualitative analysis (D. Polkinghorne (1995). The main results/findings: the common and different approaches, narratives and functions in the typhus epidemic coverage have been elucidated on the basis of the analysis of corpus of the West Ukrainian and émigré press. This research shows commonality of informative function as well as divergence of preventive function on the example of the typhus epidemic communications during 1919–1920s by the different Ukrainian periodicals of that time. Research novelty/originality: We have elucidated a focal place of grand-narrative of victimization in the editorial policies of the researched Ukrainian-language press. The conclusions have been drawn and the research avenues have been put forward, in particular in the context of modern media studies of epidemic communications in the Ukrainian media. Keywords: the Ukrainian mainstream press; newspaper; Vpered; Svoboda; the Polish periodicals; coverage; epidemic; typhus; epidemic communications; victimization grand-narrative; 1919–1920s; Eastern Galicia; Poland.

Via content analysis, this study investigates the visual portrayal of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea in US newspapers during the 2014 Ebola epidemic. Salience of identified frames and tone is assessed relative to findings identified in existing literature. Data were collected from the New York Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Dallas Morning News. Findings suggest coverage did not favour victim-only frames, relative to other types of frames, whose visual tone became marginally less negative once Ebola patients were in the United States. Such results contribute to literature regarding African media studies, public perception of foreign affairs and press coverage of international health epidemics.

The object of this research is the regional press as a source on the history of cholera epidemics of the late XIX century. The subject is the public moods and behavioral practices of the dwellers of the county town of Saratov governorate – Tsaritsyn, which was affected by cholera epidemic of 1892, in coverage of the regional press. The historiographical framework consists on the versatile and unique materials of the municipal newspaper "Volzhsko-Donskoy Listok", which are introduced into the scientific discourse for the first time. A detailed analysis of the annual publications of local press allowed tracing the chronology of the traditional approach towards perception of the poorly studied in literature cholera epidemics of 1892 in Tsaritsyn in the context of studying the history of everyday life. The author reveals this topic up until September 1893. Special attention is turned to examination of different stereotypical models of behavior that appeared to be widespread among the population, and became a somewhat response to the emerged situation of biological and social nature. The research is based on the interdisciplinary approach that implies comprehensive examination of the problem, involving the achievements in the history of medicine, historiography, psychology, sociology, etc. This article is the first attempt within the regional historiography to holistically examine the cholera epidemic of 1892 in Tsaritsyn. The conducted analysis of the newspaper “Volzhsko-Donskoy Listok” allowed to highly rate the informative capabilities of the regional press for studying cholera epidemics and their impact on life of the population in the post-reform period. The author offers the original classification of the whole variety of materials on the topic, as well as outlines the ways for their further usage.

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic scenario raises the amplification of the debate around the production and circulation of information about epidemics. In this sense, the objective of this article is to discuss how social contexts shape the news, taking as an example the case of the news coverage that transformed an epizootic of yellow fever, in the summer of 2007/2008, into an epidemic of urban yellow fever. This is a qualitative research with journalists who worked in two large circulation newspapers and actively participated in the coverage of the event. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and submitted to discourse analysis, which allowed the identification of three factors that influenced the production of a media epidemic of yellow fever: the working conditions and the modus operandi of the newsrooms; the political-ideological dimension of the newspapers; and the difficulties of translation of technical-scientific information. A critical understanding of the production process of the journalistic text can contribute to the construction of communication strategies that minimize the circulation of misinformation on public health in traditional media (newspapers, magazines, radio, TV and news portals).

Geographers and others have become increasingly interested in the intersections between globalization, disease, and security, particularly in relation to ‘short-wave’ public health threats such as SARS and pandemic influenza, but ‘long-wave’ epidemics such as HIV/AIDS are also often said to raise questions of security. While a literature is emerging to analyze the politics of security in relation to global HIV/AIDS relief, in this paper I argue that it is also important analytically and politically to connect and contrast this with the ways that HIV/AIDS is politicized as a security issue in relation to immigration and asylum within Western states themselves. Drawing on literatures in governmentality, biopolitics, and security, I examine the politics of HIV/AIDS, immigration, and asylum in the UK from 1997 to 2007 with particular reference to the reactionary press coverage that influenced policy formation and judicial rulings in this period. Following the work of William Walters, I trace the emergence of a ‘domopolitical’ rationality in press reporting around HIV/AIDS in terms of a number of imaginative geographies, and suggest that these imaginative geographies are both biopolitical in a classical sense and connected with the colonial dimensions of the present. The circulation of these imaginative geographies through policy and legal developments, the dilemmas they have raised, and resistance to them from medical, civil society, and parliamentary groups are then outlined. Reflecting on the disjuncture in approaches to HIV/AIDS between the global and national spheres, I argue that while the association of HIV/AIDS and security is enhancing life chances for many it is also reducing them for people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Resumo O cenário da pandemia de COVID-19 suscita a ampliação do debate em torno da produção e circulação de informações sobre epidemias. Nesse sentido, o objetivo deste artigo é discutir como os contextos sociais configuram as notícias, tomando como exemplo o caso da cobertura jornalística que transformou uma epizootia de febre amarela, no verão 2007/2008, em uma epidemia de febre amarela urbana. Trata-se de uma pesquisa qualitativa com jornalistas que trabalhavam em dois jornais de grande circulação e participaram ativamente da cobertura do evento. As entrevistas foram gravadas, transcritas e submetidas à análise de discurso, o que permitiu identificar três fatores que influenciaram a produção de uma epidemia midiática de febre amarela: as condições de trabalho e o modus operandi das redações; a dimensão político-ideológica dos jornais; e as dificuldades de tradução das informações técnico-científicas. A compreensão crítica do processo de produção do texto jornalístico pode contribuir para a construção de estratégias comunicacionais que minimizem a circulação de desinformação em saúde pública nas mídias tradicionais (jornais, revistas, rádio, tevê e portais de notícias).

Newspapers have the potential to take a leading role in AIDS education in Africa. With their relatively small circulations, they mainly reach educated urban citizens, a population particularly hard hit by the epidemic. This study reports findings of a content analysis of AIDS coverage of government owned newspapers in Senegal, Togo, Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya. Although most papers have printed educational articles, they have undertaken only a very minor role in any national effort. Coverage has tended to reflect government reaction, usually moving through stages of denial, scapegoating and blame before responding constructively to the epidemic. African countries surveyed are still largely engaged in epidemiological response to the epidemic; widespread education has not yet occurred. Newspapers have not yet fulfilled their potential as educational media.

This study aims to understand the dynamic evolvement of frames in news media coverage of the Ebola crisis (2014–2015) and their interplay with narratives put forth in press releases from governmental organizations (GOs). An automated content analysis was applied to U.S. newspapers and GOs’ press releases on the Ebola epidemic. Time series analyses illustrate how the scope of frames in news media becomes narrower (decreased diversity) with the presence of immediate and problem-focused crisis frames and wider (increased diversity) with more progressive frames. Additionally, the results imply that a level of shared interpretation (frame alignment) between media and GOs fosters the openness of news media for a variety of frames, which in turn might lead to a communicative shift that eases the crisis atmosphere.

Newspaper editors need to play their part in tackling the emerging HIV/AIDS epidemic in the South Pacific region as they have enormous influence and can make a difference. They can help challenge public opinion on HIV/AIDS that is often based on ignorance, fear and prejudice, and also step up coverage and allocate more space for information about prevention.

The paper discusses the directions of solidarity formation, as well as the linguistic means of its explication in the press during the coronavirus pandemic crisis. This work is based on the articles of Belarusian regional newspapers published in March–June 2020. The current situation is a global crisis that has a significant impact on the lives of people around the world; therefore its coverage in the media is extremely important. It was determined here that the main strategies for presenting the situation in the media include orientation (formulation and clarification of the crisis), neutralization (easing the tension in the society) and integration (promoting solidarity among the population during the crisis). The analysis of Belarusian regional press revealed four vectors of solidarization: social support of vulnerable categories of people (senior citizens, the disabled) by public service institutions, various organizations and volunteers; people’s personal and collective responsibility for their own health and safety of others, demonstration of responsible behaviour; institutional, mainly financial, assistance in combating the epidemic, including support to other countries; common values and the consolidation of efforts to achieve socially significant goals. Key lexemes were identified that accentuate these ideas in the publications of the regional press. The author comes to the conclusion that in a crisis situation mass media strengthens its role as a means of maintaining balance in the society and mobilizing the population in order to accomplish important tasks.

This article examines the symbolic work of gender as it intersects with race and class in popular media and in local community discourses surrounding the “suburban opioid epidemic,” in which national drug policies, and White futures, are thought to be at stake. The study starts with an analysis of the White, middle-class, female “new face of addiction” that has been cultivated by national press coverage of prescription opioid-cum-heroin overdoses in the U.S. and then turns to interviews with community physicians in the front line of a clinical response to the “epidemic” in Staten Island, a White suburban enclave within New York City that is experiencing 3–4 times the opioid overdose rate of any other City borough. Physicians use the language of family membership to indicate identification with their opioid addiction patients, and many go to lengths to provide holistic care and to incorporate family support for their patients despite lack of insurance reimbursement. White, educated patients describe buprenorphine as a way to maintain their professional identities, while low-income Black and Latino patients describe pharmaceutical maintenance as a socially alienating arm of the criminal justice system. Together, media and clinical responses make up strategies of White racial rescue from threatened social reproduction in an era of substance-induced White downward mobility.

AbstractThis paper addresses the rising suicide rate in Greece since the economic crisis began in 2008. By 2011, Greek and international media were reporting the Greek suicide rate as the fastest rising in Europe; dozens of “spectacular” public suicides were taken as symptoms of an “epidemic.” In this paper, I explore different accounts of this “epidemic”: statistical studies and press reports on suicide since the crisis; notes written by people who committed or attempted suicide in public during the crisis; and narratives of suicidality from psychiatric patients before the crisis, in dialogue with local psychiatric epidemiologies. These accounts summon three axes of comparison around suicide in Greece: historical difference, defined by the economic crisis and the time before; locale, contrasting the public sphere of media coverage and consumption with a particular region distinguished by its “suicidogenic” features; and evidence, moving from the public discourse on suicide to clinical ethnographic research that I conducted in northeastern Greece a decade ago. I show that each way of accounting for suicide challenges the epistemologies and evidence at work in the others; the tensions and the interactions among them are signs of indeterminacy in suicide itself, taken as an object of inquiry. In the public discourse on the Greek crisis, the many meanings of suicide have been condensed and fixed as a politics of protest. Yet, I argue, comparison among epistemologies of suicide and recognition of its indeterminacy generate a space for thinking about suicide beyond the publicity of the crisis.

One year after the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, on the world graph of daily morbidity can be seen that we are in the downturn of the third epidemic wave, consistent with the downturn of the third wave of daily deaths from/with Covid-19. However, the written press and the audiovisual media continue to present alarming balance sheets several times a day that lead the public to the idea of public danger. Doubts about the adequacy of declaring the pandemic were interpreted by some "naysayers" as doubts about the existence of the disease and the virus, and some loudly expressed their opposition against the prophylactic measures. Increasingly, public opinion, the press, and the judiciary system are shedding light on the causes of these approaches, which claim to be based on scientific criteria but sometimes prove to be pseudo-scientific, causing an „infodemic”. The best objective orientation in this informational chaos is based on the mathematical-statistical processing of official data that is centralized daily from all countries of the world and published on the Internet. The statistical calculation suggests that in addition to the inequalities inherent in different populations, there are also cases of over-reporting, overdiagnosis, over-treatment, and/or over-media coverage of the Covid-19 case practice. As a general conclusion, the virus is real, the disease is real, but the risk to public health is not particularly serious except in certain geographical areas. If scientifically established prophylaxis and treatment measures are followed, the pandemic may end this year.

O presente artigo pretende analisar a cobertura que o jornal Notícias Populares realizou sobre o surgimento e a divulgação dos primeiros casos de AIDS, no mundo e no Brasil, durante os anos de 1982, 1983 e 1984. O periódico é possivelmente o maior símbolo do sensacionalismo na imprensa brasileira, porém, diante do surgimento de uma nova e mortal epidemia, o veículo mostrou-se, surpreendentemente, bem mais ponderado de que desesperado, mais respeitoso do que sarcástico, mais comedido do que histérico, matizando e borrando a fronteira entre o jornalismo “sério” e o “sensacional”.Palavras-chave: História e imprensa; AIDS; Sensacionalismo; Morte; Homossexualidade.Abstract:The present article intends to analyze the coverage that Brazilian newspaper Notícias Populares carried out on the emergence and dissemination of first AIDS cases, in the world and in Brazil, during the years of 1982, 1983 and 1984. The journal is possibly the biggest symbol of sensationalism in the Brazilian press, however, in face of a new and deadly epidemic, the vehicle was surprisingly much more thoughtful than desperate, more respectful than sarcastic, more restrained than hysterical, tempering and blurring the frontier between "serious" and "sensational" journalism.

It has been about two years since the first COVID-19 epidemic began,now it coincides with the fifth peak of epidemic infection in some countries. Over the years we have experienced many ups and downs of this virus(1, 2). It has been about two years since the first COVID-19 epidemic began,now it coincides with the fifth peak of epidemic infection in some countries. Over the years we have experienced many ups and downs of this virus(1, 2). Some people are still with us, but unfortunately, some have left us in the middle of their lives, and they have become victims of the COVID-19 pandemic(3). A virus that when it got into the world of people, many said: "It does not last long and when it reaching warm seasons of the year, it will die prematurely and does not survive." However, the virus has survived to this today. Efforts have been made around the world to shine the bright rays of hope and life in the shady cornerscreated by it(4, 5). One of these constructive efforts is to obtain a vaccine against COVID-19. COVID-19 vaccination rates have still not been optimal in some countries(6, 7). While China, India, and the United States have had the highest vaccination rates (over 100%) since August 4, 2021, the statistics are disappointing in some other countries(8). For example, approximately 1.16% of Iranians received vaccinations at the same time(6-8). This is not sufficient to achieve so-called herd immunity, and hospitals have become more crowded due to the serious spread of the more contagious type of delta. In addition to the lack of appropriate vaccines due to economic sanctions following the political tensions in some countries,such as Iran(9, 10), the reasons for refusing free injections and neglecting preventive measures are also different(5). The covid-19 virus survived and mutant and increased mortality. However, still, some people don't hear and look at these facts. The efforts of medical staff across the globe have not yet been properly heard(5). What remains are the challenges that have endangered human life on earth, and we seem to be counting it down. These barriers must be identified in a short time. The workload of medical staff has grown significantly. In addition, journalists and the press have come to their aid, reporting and promoting the views of professors, experts, and heads of the health care system in the press, and enlightenment efforts have reached the point where politicians are talking about COVID-19 in election campaigns(11). Although an unknown and difficult path has been taken so far, it seems that this path is still ahead(7). In addition to government agencies, removing these barriers requires residents' campaigns to get vaccinated for their health, for their grandparents, for their neighbors, or to use free incentives(5, 12). Failure to do so will result in significant health costs for governments and economies.Failure to get COVID-19 vaccination in most cases leads to hospitalization and usually leads to large bills. These expenses will be higher for the uninsured person. It also enhances the likelihood of re-globalization pandemic with its mutant strains(13). References: Ferrer, R COVID-19 Pandemic: the greatest challenge in the history of critical care. Medicina intensiva. 2020;44(6):323. He, J.; Chen, G.; Jiang, Y.; Jin, R.; Shortridge, A.; Agusti, S et al. Comparative infection modeling and control of COVID-19 transmission patterns in China, South Korea, Italy and Iran. Science of the Total Environment. 2020;747:141447. Stock, AD.; Bader, ER.; Cezayirli, P.; Inocencio, J.; Chalmers SA, Yassari R, et al. COVID-19 infection among healthcare workers: serological findings supporting routine testing. Frontiers in medicine. 2020;7:471. Rezaeipour, M COVID-19-Related Weight Gain in School-Aged Children. International Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism. 2021;19(1). Lazarus, JV.; Ratzan, SC.; Palayew, A.; Gostin, LO.; Larson, HJ.; Rabin, K et al. A global survey of potential acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine. Nature medicine. 2021;27(2):225-8. Basiri N, Koushki M. Study of Vaccine Production Abroad and Scientific and Research Challenges of COVID-19 Vaccine Production in Iran. Annals of the Romanian Society for Cell Biology. 2021:17249-56. 7.Maserat, E.; Keikha, L.; Davoodi, S.; Mohammadzadeh, Z. E-health roadmap for COVID- 19 vaccine coverage in Iran. BMC Public Health. 2021;21(1):1-11. Mathieu, E.; Ritchie, H.; Ortiz-Ospina, E.; Roser, M.; Hasell, J.; Appel, C et al. A global database of COVID-19 vaccinations. Nature human behaviour. 2021:1-7. Rustamovich, KM The Impact of Economic Sanctions on Well-being of Vulnerable Populations of Target Countries. International Journal on Economics, Finance and Sustainable Development. 2019;1(1):17-20. Setayesh, S.; Mackey, TK.; Addressing the impact of economic sanctions on Iranian drug shortages in the joint comprehensive plan of action: promoting access to medicines and health diplomacy. Globalization and health. 2016;12(1):1-14. Aten, M.; Transnational Kleptocracy and the COVID-19 Pandemic How to Contain the Spread? Transnational Kleptocracy and the COVID-19 Pandemic Containing the Spread. 2021:4. Paul, E.; Steptoe, A.; Fancourt, D.; Attitudes towards vaccines and intention to vaccinate against COVID-19: Implications for public health communications. The Lancet Regional Health-Europe. 2021;1:100012. Desapriya, E.; Parisa, K.; Gunatunge, K. RE: Global deaths from COVID-19 have surpassed 3 million in mid of April, 2021. 2021.

Abstract Background The Swiss Epidemics Act 2016 foresees no vaccine mandates in routine settings. Only in certain settings can the federal government, after consulting with Swiss cantons, “declare vaccinations mandatory for risk groups, persons at threat of particular exposure, and persons exercising certain activities once a serious danger has been established.” Parliament proposed this Act in March 2012 arguing that recent infectious disease outbreaks required stronger preparedness plans clearly delineating responsibilities of the Confederation, cantons, and third parties. Swiss naturopath Trappitsch gathered >75,000 signatures to launch a referendum contesting the law. Main criticisms dealt with ambiguous language around mandates, infringement upon individual liberty, and fear of an overreaching federal government. Nevertheless, the Swiss populace voted to pass the law (60% in favor) in September 2013. Methods Qualitative interviews with key informants (N = 5 public health officials-PHO) and analysis of press coverage of the legislation/referendum allow for an investigation of the ambiguity of the mandate language and the referendum's consequences on this issue in public discourses. Results Several PHOs/politicians stated during the referendum that “nobody would be vaccinated against their will” and implied that the law would apply, for example, to non-vaccinated healthcare professionals who could be transferred to different care units to protect patients. Such specificities never appeared in the law. Ambiguous language around mandates served as a point of contention around which vaccination critics united and gained political traction. Such criticisms put State actors in the position of needing to more clearly articulate their perspectives. Conclusions With neighboring countries enacting vaccine mandate policies (France, Italy, Germany) in response to resurgence in measles cases, current legislative language leaves the question of mandates open to interpretation

This research seeks to determine the value shown by the media coverage of the Coronavirus pandemic by Al Ghad, a Jordanian daily newspaper, by analysing the content of its coverage between December 2019 to December 2020. A descriptive and analytical approach was adopted to show how the newspaper’s coverage dealt with Coronavirus issues, using a content analysis tool for all types of journalistic editing used during the study period. This research mainly aims to determine the extent of the Coronavirus-related press coverage by the Jordanian newspaper Al Ghad and to assess the content value of this coverage. The results of the press coverage analysis showed that the ‘Research Sample’ section of Al Ghad had extensive and high-value coverage of the Coronavirus pandemic. The analysis also revealed a negative trend in the number of topics covered by Al Ghad newspaper during the study period.

Using framing analysis, this article explores how the English language press organized coverage of the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. The coverage began with a standard “outbreak” narrative that defined the problem in terms of “primitive” lifeways and inadequate humanitarian aid. However, after the World Health Organization declared an international emergency and after Ebola carriers began to appear in the West, the framing changed toward a “pandemic” narrative that shifted attention away from medical solutions, humanitarian aid, and national safety toward government and military action, biosecurity, and the global species network. This change in the press narrative makes sense to populations in the West because they increasingly live within a “pandemic culture” that has become characteristic of globalized societies.Cet article a recours à une analyse des cadres pour explorer comment la presse de langue anglaise a couvert l’épidémie d’Ébola en Afrique de l’Ouest. Cette couverture a commencé par une narration conventionnelle sur les origines de la maladie qui a mis l’accent sur les modes de vie « primitives » et l’aide humanitaire inadéquate. Cependant, suivant l’état d’urgence déclaré par l’Organisation mondiale de la santé et l’arrivée de personnes atteintes d’Ébola en Occident, le cadre narratif a changé, soulignant l’idée d’une « pandémie » tout en attirant l’attention du public sur les interventions gouvernementales et militaires, la biosécurité et le réseau mondial d’espèces plutôt que sur les solutions médicales, l’aide humanitaire et la sécurité nationale. Ce changement narratif paraît normal pour les populations occidentales parce que celles-ci vivent de plus en plus dans une « culture de la pandémie » typique des sociétés mondialisées.

Abstract Background COVID-19 occurred in Italy in February, after its outbreak in China. The number of news on newspapers and on media was massive, however, this communication did not take into account properly the level of comprehension of general public of health related issues, which in turns can have a huge impact on public health and related policies. In the light of above this study aims to analyze press coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic/epidemic in Italy. Methods An analysis of the press and related online journal coverage during CoVID-19 was conducted. A total of 1512 articles in two months were analyzed. Two main analyses were carried out, a coding quantitative content analysis of newspapers article data and a textual analysis and a sentiment analysis using Taltac 2.10 and Voyant Tools. Results There was an overall similar idea among different newspapers, this means that both tabloids and broadsheet newspapers show an overall similar content, with a small difference on quality and tone. Results, moreover, displayed two different chronologically lead trends during the COVID-19 crisis. The first two week articles were mainly focused on the illness per se, in terms of prevention, care, cure but also fear, and anxiety; while after a while, around 2 months later newspapers were much more focused on the socio-political-economic impact that COVID-19 had on Italy and potentially could have in the closer future, also for the health organizations. Conclusions Newspaper attitude in publishing sensationalistic articles and titles show to take small account of the effect that could potentially have on general public understanding of the issues connected to the virus. This both in the outbreak in terms of what could be the effect of the virus on their health and later on the economy of the country. More attention should be paid in analysing the impact that newspaper communication has on general public behavior and reactions. Key messages Information is crucial for the management of epidemic/pandemic disease. Panic of population is the result of inaccurate information communication.

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, all hopes are turned towards science. In this article, we put forward a qualitative analysis of how the French national press covered the issue of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine during the first months, with a focus on the descriptions of the scientific world. We show that during epidemic outbreaks the various tensions existing within the scientific world are more likely to be presented to the public. In their coverage of hydroxychloroquine, journalists shed light on a variety of aspects of contemporary medical research, ranging from the way scientists approach a given drug, the stages of research on medical treatments, the types of proofs used and the institutional make-up of biomedical research. But in doing so they also presented a series of tensions and disagreements which devolved into public accusations of scientific misconduct and anti-science behaviours.

Abstract Introduction Health care professionals cover the front line in the battle against infectious diseases. Vaccination of healthcare workers represents a vital element of the strategy for enhancing epidemic safety and improving the quality of health care, inter alia, by limiting microorganism transmission, and reducing patient morbidity and mortality. Method The study group consisted of all employees of the long-term health care centre in Lublin, Poland. Participants were requested to complete a questionnaire prepared for the purpose of the study, along with a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination interview questionnaire. Results The vaccination coverage rate for the group of medical workers was 77.3% and of non-medical 86%. The most frequently indicated sources of information on vaccination were the mass media. Males more often than females used the press as a source of information on vaccination. Scientific articles were the most common source of information for both people with higher education and medical professionals. The most common motive for vaccination for females is concern for the health of one's family, and for HCWs and people with at least secondary education-concern for the health of patients. Conclusion At least one assessed factor influences the decision to be vaccinated. The mass media are of the greatest importance in obtaining information about vaccination.

Covid-19 has resulted in a totally extraordinary and anomalous situation. This new coronavirus became a global phenomenon after the declaration of a pandemic state, which affects all fields: health, economic, social, scientific, environmental, etc. This health emergency affects many different levels and actors, including media and journalism. As far as news coverage is concerned, the front page of the press represents a relevant object of study from a journalistic, as well as sociological and historiographical, point of view. The front page plays an important temporary explanatory role, especially during an event as disruptive as the pandemic. It offers the possibility to take a “snapshot” of the coverage of an ongoing event. The aim of this research is to analyze the coverage of the new coronavirus and its evolution throughout the first quarter of 2020. To answer these questions, a thematic content analysis of 630 front pages of seven Spanish national generalist newspapers (El país, El mundo, ABC, La razón, La vanguardia, El periódico, and El correo) was carried out. The results indicated that information about the virus increased progressively as the epidemic approached the Spanish borders. The coverage in the Spanish newspapers was highly homogeneous, although some differences can be found, mainly due to editorial trends and regional or national perspectives. The pattern of the analyzed samples is characterized by the current diagnosis of the pandemic, highly focused on the definition of the problem and the proposal of health solutions. Resumen La Covid-19 ha provocado una situación completamente extraordinaria y anómala. El nuevo coronavirus se ha convertido en un fenómeno global tras la declaración de un estado pandémico que afecta a todos los campos: sanitario, económico, social, científico, medioambiental, etc. Esta emergencia sanitaria afecta también a distintos niveles y actores, entre ellos los medios y el periodismo. En lo que a cobertura informativa se refiere, la portada de prensa representa un objeto de estudio relevante desde el punto de vista periodístico, pero también sociológico e historiográfico. La página principal juega un importante papel temporal explicativo, especialmente durante un evento tan disruptivo como la pandemia. Ofrece la posibilidad de “fotografiar” la cobertura de un acontecimiento en curso. El objetivo de esta investigación es analizar la cobertura del nuevo coronavirus y su evolución a lo largo del primer trimestre de 2020. Para responder a estas cuestiones, se realiza un análisis de contenido temático de 630 portadas de siete periódicos generalistas españoles de alcance nacional: El país, El mundo, ABC, La razón, La vanguardia, El periódico y El correo. Los resultados indican que la información sobre el virus ha ido aumentando progresivamente según la epidemia se hacía más próxima hasta estar dentro de las fronteras españolas. También que la cobertura fue muy homogénea en los diarios españoles, aunque se localizan algunas diferencias sobre todo por tendencias editoriales y por perspectiva regional o nacional. Asimismo, el patrón de los encuadres analizados se caracteriza por el diagnóstico actual de la pandemia muy enfocado en la definición del problema y la propuesta de soluciones sanitarias.

Introduction A snapshot, not unlike countless photographs likely to be found in any number of family albums, shows two figures sitting on a park bench: an elderly and amiable looking man grins beneath the rim of a golf cap; a young boy of twelve smiles wide for the camera — a rather banal scene, captured on film. And yet, this seemingly innocent and unexceptional photograph was the site of a remarkable and wide ranging discourse — encompassing American conservatism, celebrity politics, and the end of the Cold War — as the image circulated around the globe during the weeklong state funeral of Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th president of the United States. Taken in 1997 by the young boy’s grandfather, Ukrainian immigrant Yakov Ravin, during a chance encounter with the former president, the snapshot is believed to be the last public photograph of Ronald Reagan. Published on the occasion of the president’s death, the photograph made “instant celebrities” of the boy, now a twenty-year-old college student, Rostik Denenburg and his grand dad. Throughout the week of Reagan’s funeral, the two joined a chorus of dignitaries, politicians, pundits, and “ordinary” Americans praising Ronald Reagan: “The Great Communicator,” the man who defeated Communism, the popular president who restored America’s confidence, strength, and prosperity. Yes, it was mourning in America again. And the whole world was watching. Not since Princess Diana’s sudden (and unexpected) death, have we witnessed an electronic hagiography of such global proportions. Unlike Diana’s funeral, however, Reagan’s farewell played out in distinctly partisan terms. As James Ridgeway (2004) noted, the Reagan state funeral was “not only face-saving for the current administration, but also perhaps a mask for the American military debacle in Iraq. Not to mention a gesture of America’s might in the ‘war on terror.’” With non-stop media coverage, the weeklong ceremonies provided a sorely needed shot in the arm to the Bush re-election campaign. Still, whilst the funeral proceedings and the attendant media coverage were undeniably excessive in their deification of the former president, the historical white wash was not nearly so vulgar as the antiseptic send off Richard Nixon received back in 1994. That is to say, the piety of the Nixon funeral was at once startling and galling to many who reviled the man (Lapham). By contrast, given Ronald Reagan’s disarming public persona, his uniquely cordial relationship with the national press corps, and most notably, his handler’s mastery of media management techniques, the Reagan idolatry was neither surprising nor unexpected. In this brief essay, I want to consider Reagan’s funeral, and his legacy, in relation to what cultural critics, referring to the production of celebrity, have described as “fame games” (Turner, Bonner & Marshall). Specifically, I draw on the concept of “flashpoints” — moments of media excess surrounding a particular personage — in consideration of the Reagan funeral. Throughout, I demonstrate how Reagan’s death and the attendant media coverage epitomize this distinctive feature of contemporary culture. Furthermore, I observe Reagan’s innovative approaches to electoral politics in the age of television. Here, I suggest that Reagan’s appropriation of the strategies and techniques associated with advertising, marketing and public relations were decisive, not merely in terms of his electoral success, but also in securing his lasting fame. I conclude with some thoughts on the implications of Reagan’s legacy on historical memory, contemporary politics, and what neoconservatives, the heirs of the Reagan Revolution, gleefully describe as the New American Century. The Magic Hour On the morning of 12 June 2004, the last day of the state funeral, world leaders eulogized Reagan, the statesmen, at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Among the A-List political stars invited to speak were Margaret Thatcher, former president George H. W. Bush and, to borrow Arundhati Roi’s useful phrase, “Bush the Lesser.” Reagan’s one-time Cold War adversary, Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as former Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were also on hand, but did not have speaking parts. Former Reagan administration officials, Supreme Court justices, and congressional representatives from both sides of the aisle rounded out a guest list that read like a who’s who of the American political class. All told, Reagan’s weeklong sendoff was a state funeral at its most elaborate. It had it all—the flag draped coffin, the grieving widow, the riderless horse, and the procession of mourners winding their way through the Rotunda of the US Capitol. In this last regard, Reagan joined an elite group of seven presidents, including four who died by assassination — Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy — to be honored by having his remains lie in state in the Rotunda. But just as the deceased president was product of the studio system, so too, the script for the Gipper’s swan song come straight out of Hollywood. Later that day, the Reagan entourage made one last transcontinental flight back to the presidential library in Simi Valley, California for a private funeral service at sunset. In Hollywood parlance, the “magic hour” refers to the quality of light at dusk. It is an ideal, but ephemeral time favored by cinematographers, when the sunlight takes on a golden glow lending grandeur, nostalgia, and oftentimes, a sense of closure to a scene. This was Ronald Reagan’s final moment in the sun: a fitting end for an actor of the silver screen, as well as for the president who mastered televisual politics. In a culture so thoroughly saturated with the image, even the death of a minor celebrity is an occasion to replay film clips, interviews, paparazzi photos and the like. Moreover, these “flashpoints” grow in intensity and frequency as promotional culture, technological innovation, and the proliferation of new media outlets shape contemporary media culture. They are both cause and consequence of these moments of media excess. And, as Turner, Bonner and Marshall observe, “That is their point. It is their disproportionate nature that makes them so important: the scale of their visibility, their overwhelmingly excessive demonstration of the power of the relationship between mass-mediated celebrities and the consumers of popular culture” (3-4). B-Movie actor, corporate spokesman, state governor and, finally, US president, Ronald Reagan left an extraordinary photographic record. Small wonder, then, that Reagan’s death was a “flashpoint” of the highest order: an orgy of images, a media spectacle waiting to happen. After all, Reagan appeared in over 50 films during his career in Hollywood. Publicity stills and clips from Reagan’s film career, including Knute Rockne, All American, the biopic that earned Reagan his nickname “the Gipper”, King’s Row, and Bedtime for Bonzo provided a surreal, yet welcome respite from television’s obsessive (some might say morbidly so) live coverage of Reagan’s remains making their way across country. Likewise, archival footage of Reagan’s political career — most notably, images of the 1981 assassination attempt; his quip “not to make age an issue” during the 1984 presidential debate; and his 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate demanding that Soviet President Gorbachev, “tear down this wall” — provided the raw materials for press coverage that thoroughly dominated the global mediascape. None of which is to suggest, however, that the sheer volume of Reagan’s photographic record is sufficient to account for the endless replay and reinterpretation of Reagan’s life story. If we are to fully comprehend Reagan’s fame, we must acknowledge his seminal engagement with promotional culture, “a professional articulation between the news and entertainment media and the sources of publicity and promotion” (Turner, Bonner & Marshall 5) in advancing an extraordinary political career. Hitting His Mark In a televised address supporting Barry Goldwater’s nomination for the presidency delivered at the 1964 Republican Convention, Ronald Reagan firmly established his conservative credentials and, in so doing, launched one of the most remarkable and influential careers in American politics. Political scientist Gerard J. De Groot makes a compelling case that the strategy Reagan and his handlers developed in the 1966 California gubernatorial campaign would eventually win him the presidency. The centerpiece of this strategy was to depict the former actor as a political outsider. Crafting a persona he described as “citizen politician,” Reagan’s great appeal and enormous success lie in his uncanny ability to project an image founded on traditional American values of hard work, common sense and self-determination. Over the course of his political career, Reagan’s studied optimism and “no-nonsense” approach to public policy would resonate with an electorate weary of career politicians. Charming, persuasive, and seemingly “authentic,” Reagan ran gubernatorial and subsequent presidential campaigns that were distinctive in that they employed sophisticated public relations and marketing techniques heretofore unknown in the realm of electoral politics. The 1966 Reagan gubernatorial campaign took the then unprecedented step of employing an advertising firm, Los Angeles-based Spencer-Roberts, in shaping the candidate’s image. Leveraging their candidate’s ease before the camera, the Reagan team crafted a campaign founded upon a sophisticated grasp of the television industry, TV news routines, and the medium’s growing importance to electoral politics. For instance, in the days before the 1966 Republican primary, the Reagan team produced a five-minute film using images culled from his campaign appearances. Unlike his opponent, whose television spots were long-winded, amateurish and poorly scheduled pieces that interrupted popular programs, like Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, Reagan’s short film aired in the early evening, between program segments (De Groot). Thus, while his opponent’s television spot alienated viewers, the Reagan team demonstrated a formidable appreciation not only for televisual style, but also, crucially, a sophisticated understanding of the nuances of television scheduling, audience preferences and viewing habits. Over the course of his political career, Reagan refined his media driven, media directed campaign strategy. An analysis of his 1980 presidential campaign reveals three dimensions of Reagan’s increasingly sophisticated media management strategy (Covington et al.). First, the Reagan campaign carefully controlled their candidate’s accessibility to the press. Reagan’s penchant for potentially damaging off-the-cuff remarks and factual errors led his advisors to limit journalists’ interactions with the candidate. Second, the character of Reagan’s public appearances, including photo opportunities and especially press conferences, grew more formal. Reagan’s interactions with the press corps were highly structured affairs designed to control which reporters were permitted to ask questions and to help the candidate anticipate questions and prepare responses in advance. Finally, the Reagan campaign sought to keep the candidate “on message.” That is to say, press releases, photo opportunities and campaign appearances focused on a single, consistent message. This approach, known as the Issue of the Day (IOD) media management strategy proved indispensable to advancing the administration’s goals and achieving its objectives. Not only was the IOD strategy remarkably effective in influencing press coverage of the Reagan White House, this coverage promoted an overwhelmingly positive image of the president. As the weeklong funeral amply demonstrated, Reagan was, and remains, one of the most popular presidents in modern American history. Reagan’s popular (and populist) appeal is instructive inasmuch as it illuminates the crucial distinction between “celebrity and its premodern antecedent, fame” observed by historian Charles L. Ponce de Leone (13). Whereas fame was traditionally bestowed upon those whose heroism and extraordinary achievements distinguished them from common people, celebrity is a defining feature of modernity, inasmuch as celebrity is “a direct outgrowth of developments that most of us regard as progressive: the spread of the market economy and the rise of democratic, individualistic values” (Ponce de Leone 14). On one hand, then, Reagan’s celebrity reflects his individualism, his resolute faith in the primacy of the market, and his defense of “traditional” (i.e. democratic) American values. On the other hand, by emphasizing his heroic, almost supernatural achievements, most notably his vanquishing of the “Evil Empire,” the Reagan mythology serves to lift him “far above the common rung of humanity” raising him to “the realm of the divine” (Ponce de Leone 14). Indeed, prior to his death, the Reagan faithful successfully lobbied Congress to create secular shrines to the standard bearer of American conservatism. For instance, in 1998, President Clinton signed a bill that officially rechristened one of the US capitol’s airports to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. More recently, conservatives working under the aegis of the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project have called for the creation of even more visible totems to the Reagan Revolution, including replacing Franklin D. Roosevelt’s profile on the dime with Reagan’s image and, more dramatically, inscribing Reagan in stone, alongside Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt at Mount Rushmore (Gordon). Therefore, Reagan’s enduring fame rests not only on the considerable symbolic capital associated with his visual record, but also, increasingly, upon material manifestations of American political culture. The High Stakes of Media Politics What are we to make of Reagan’s fame and its implications for America? To begin with, we must acknowledge Reagan’s enduring influence on modern electoral politics. Clearly, Reagan’s “citizen politician” was a media construct — the masterful orchestration of ideological content across the institutional structures of news, public relations and marketing. While some may suggest that Reagan’s success was an anomaly, a historical aberration, a host of politicians, and not a few celebrities — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Arnold Schwarzenegger among them — emulate Reagan’s style and employ the media management strategies he pioneered. Furthermore, we need to recognize that the Reagan mythology that is so thoroughly bound up in his approach to media/politics does more to obscure, rather than illuminate the historical record. For instance, in her (video taped) remarks at the funeral service, Margaret Thatcher made the extraordinary claim — a central tenet of the Reagan Revolution — that Ronnie won the cold war “without firing a shot.” Such claims went unchallenged, at least in the establishment press, despite Reagan’s well-documented penchant for waging costly and protracted proxy wars in Afghanistan, Africa, and Central America. Similarly, the Reagan hagiography failed to acknowledge the decisive role Gorbachev and his policies of “reform” and “openness” — Perestroika and Glasnost — played in the ending of the Cold War. Indeed, Reagan’s media managed populism flies in the face of what radical historian Howard Zinn might describe as a “people’s history” of the 1980s. That is to say, a broad cross-section of America — labor, racial and ethnic minorities, environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists among them — rallied in vehement opposition to Reagan’s foreign and domestic policies. And yet, throughout the weeklong funeral, the divisiveness of the Reagan era went largely unnoted. In the Reagan mythology, then, popular demonstrations against an unprecedented military build up, the administration’s failure to acknowledge, let alone intervene in the AIDS epidemic, and the growing disparity between rich and poor that marked his tenure in office were, to borrow a phrase, relegated to the dustbin of history. In light of the upcoming US presidential election, we ought to weigh how Reagan’s celebrity squares with the historical record; and, equally important, how his legacy both shapes and reflects the realities we confront today. Whether we consider economic and tax policy, social services, electoral politics, international relations or the domestic culture wars, Reagan’s policies and practices continue to determine the state of the union and inform the content and character of American political discourse. Increasingly, American electoral politics turns on the pithy soundbite, the carefully orchestrated pseudo-event, and a campaign team’s unwavering ability to stay on message. Nowhere is this more evident than in Ronald Reagan’s unmistakable influence upon the current (and illegitimate) occupant of the White House. References Covington, Cary R., Kroeger, K., Richardson, G., and J. David Woodward. “Shaping a Candidate’s Image in the Press: Ronald Reagan and the 1980 Presidential Election.” Political Research Quarterly 46.4 (1993): 783-98. De Groot, Gerard J. “‘A Goddamed Electable Person’: The 1966 California Gubernatorial Campaign of Ronald Reagan.” History 82.267 (1997): 429-48. Gordon, Colin. “Replace FDR on the Dime with Reagan?” History News Network 15 December, 2003. http://hnn.us/articles/1853.html>. Lapham, Lewis H. “Morte de Nixon – Death of Richard Nixon – Editorial.” Harper’s Magazine (July 1994). http://www.harpers.org/MorteDeNixon.html>. Ponce de Leon, Charles L. Self-Exposure: Human-Interest Journalism and the Emergence of Celebrity in America, 1890-1940. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2002. Ridgeway, James. “Bush Takes a Ride in Reagan’s Wake.” Village Voice (10 June 2004). http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0423/mondo5.php>. Turner, Graeme, Frances Bonner, and P. David Marshall. Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Zinn, Howard. The Peoples’ History of the United States: 1492-Present. New York: Harper Perennial, 1995. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Howley, Kevin. "Always Famous: Or, The Electoral Half-Life of Ronald Reagan." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/17-howley.php>. APA Style Howley, K. (Nov. 2004) "Always Famous: Or, The Electoral Half-Life of Ronald Reagan," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/17-howley.php>.

IntroductionIt has been nearly half a century since the appearance of Susan Sontag’s landmark essay “The Imagination of Disaster.” The critic wrote of the public fascination with science fiction disaster films, claiming that, on the one hand “from a psychological point of view, the imagination of disaster does not greatly differ from one period in history to another [but, on the other hand] from a political and moral point of view, it does” (224). Even if Sontag is right about aspects of the imagination of disaster not changing, the types, frequency, and magnitude of disasters and their representation in media and popular culture suggest that dynamic conditions prevail on both counts. Disaster has become a significantly urban phenomenon, and highly publicised “worst case” scenarios such as Hurricane Katrina and the Haiti earthquake highlight multiple demographic, cultural, and environmental contexts for visualising cataclysm. The 1950s and 60s science fiction films that Sontag wrote about were filled with marauding aliens and freaks of disabused science. Since then, their visual and dramatic effects have been much enlarged by all kinds of disaster scenarios. Partly imagined, these scenarios have real-life counterparts with threats from terrorism and the war on terror, pan-epidemics, and global climate change. Sontag’s essay—like most, if not all of the films she mentions—overlooked the aftermath; that is, the rebuilding, following extra-terrestrial invasion. It ignored what was likely to happen when the monsters were gone. In contrast, the psychological as well as the practical, social, and economic aspects of reconstruction are integral to disaster discourse today. Writing about how architecture might creatively contribute to post-conflict (including war) and disaster recovery, for instance, Boano elaborates the psychological background for rebuilding, where the material destruction of dwellings and cities “carries a powerful symbolic erosion of security, social wellbeing and place attachment” (38); these are depicted as attributes of selfhood and identity that must be restored. Similarly, Hutchison and Bleiker (385) adopt a view evident in disaster studies, that disaster-struck communities experience “trauma” and require inspired responses that facilitate “healing and reconciliation” as well as material aid such as food, housing, and renewed infrastructure. This paper revisits Sontag’s “The Imagination of Disaster,” fifty years on in view of the changing face of disasters and their representation in film media, including more recent films. The paper then considers disaster recovery and outlines the difficult path that “creative industries” like architecture and urban planning must tread when promising a vision of rebuilding that provides for such intangible outcomes as “healing and reconciliation.” We find that hopes for the seemingly positive psychologically- and socially-recuperative outcomes accompanying the prospect of rebuilding risk a variety of generalisation akin to wish-fulfilment that Sontag finds in disaster films. The Psychology of Science Fiction and Disaster FilmsIn “The Imagination of Disaster,” written at or close to the height of the Cold War, Sontag ruminates on what America’s interest in, if not preoccupation with, science fiction films tell us about ourselves. Their popularity cannot be explained in terms of their entertainment value alone; or if it can, then why audiences found (and still find) such films entertaining is something that itself needs explanation.Depicted in media like photography and film, utopian and dystopian thought have at least one thing in common. Their visions of either perfected or socially alienated worlds are commonly prompted by criticism of the social/political status quo and point to its reform. For Sontag, science fiction films portrayed both people’s worst nightmares concerning disaster and catastrophe (e.g. the end of the world; chaos; enslavement; mutation), as well as their facile victories over the kinds of moral, political, and social dissolution the films imaginatively depicted. Sontag does not explicitly attribute such “happy endings” to wish-fulfilling phantasy and ego-protection. (“Phantasy” is to be distinguished from fantasy. It is a psychoanalytic term for states of mind, often symbolic in form, resulting from infantile wish-fulfilment, desires and instincts.) She does, however, describe the kinds of fears, existential concerns (like annihilation), and crises of meaning they are designed (purpose built) to allay. The fears are a product of the time—the down and dark side of technology (e.g. depersonalisation; ambivalence towards science, scientists, and technology) and changes wrought in our working and personal lives by urbanisation. In short, then as now, science fictions films were both expressions of deep and genuine worries and of the pressing need to inventively set them to rest.When Sontag claims that “the imagination of disaster does not greatly differ” (224) from one period to another, this is because, psychologically speaking, neither the precipitating concerns and fears (death, loss of love, meaninglessness, etc.), nor the ways in which people’s minds endeavour to assuage them, substantively differ. What is different is the way they are depicted. This is unsurprisingly a function of the political, social, and moral situations and milieus that provide the context in which the imagination of disaster unfolds. In contemporary society, the extent to which the media informs and constructs the context in which the imagination operates is unprecedented.Sontag claims that there is little if any criticism of the real social and political conditions that bring about the fears the films depict (223). Instead, fantasy operates so as to displace and project the actual causes away from their all too human origins into outer space and onto aliens. In a sense, this is the core and raison d’etre for such films. By their very nature, science fiction films of the kind Sontag is discussing cannot concern themselves with genuine social or political criticism (even though the films are necessarily expressive of such criticism). Any serious questioning of the moral and political status quo—conditions that are responsible for the disasters befalling people—would hamper the operation of fantasy and its production of temporarily satisfying “solutions” to whatever catastrophe is being depicted.Sontag goes on to discuss various strategies science fiction employs to deal with such fears. For example, through positing a bifurcation between good and evil, and grossly oversimplifying the moral complexity of situations, it allows one to “give outlet to cruel or at least amoral feelings” (215) and to exercise feelings of superiority—moral and otherwise. Ambiguous feelings towards science and technology are repressed. Quick and psychologically satisfying fixes are sought for these by means of phantasy and the imaginative construction of invulnerable heroes. Much of what Sontag says can straightforwardly be applied to catastrophe in general. “Alongside the hopeful fantasy of moral simplification and international unity embodied in the science fiction films lurk the deepest anxieties about contemporary existence” (220). Sontag writes:In the films it is by means of images and sounds […] that one can participate in the fantasy of living through one’s own death and more, the death of cities, the destruction of humanity itself. Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects in art. In science fiction films disaster is rarely viewed intensively; it is always extensive. It is a matter of quality and ingenuity […] the science fiction film […] is concerned with the aesthetics of disaster […] and it is in the imagery of destruction that the core of a good science fiction film lies. (212–13)In science fiction films, disaster, though widespread, is viewed intensively as well as extensively. The disturbances constitutive of the disaster are moral and emotional as well as material. People are left without the mental or physical abilities they need to cope. Government is absent or useless. We find ourselves in what amounts to what Naomi Zack (“Philosophy and Disaster”; Ethics for Disaster) describes as a Hobbesian second state of nature—where government is inoperative and chaos (moral, social, political, personal) reigns. Science fiction’s way out is to imaginatively construct scenarios emotionally satisfying enough to temporarily assuage the distress (anomie or chaos) experienced in the film.There is, however, a tremendous difference in the way in which people who face catastrophic occurrences in their lives, as opposed to science fiction, address the problems. For one thing, they must be far closer to complex and quickly changing realities and uncertain truths than are the phantastic, temporarily gratifying, and morally unproblematic resolutions to the catastrophic scenarios that science fiction envisions. Genuine catastrophe, for example war, undermines and dismantles the structures—material structures to be sure but also those of justice, human kindness, and affectivity—that give us the wherewithal to function and that are shown to be inimical to catastrophe as such. Disaster dispenses with civilization while catastrophe displaces it.Special Effects and Changing StorylinesScience fiction and disaster film genres have been shaped by developments in visual simulation technologies providing opportunities for imaginatively mixing fact and fiction. Developments in filmmaking include computer or digital techniques for reproducing on the screen what can otherwise only be imagined as causal sequences of events and spectacles accompanying the wholesale destruction of buildings and cities—even entire planets. Indeed films are routinely promoted on the basis of how cinematographers and technicians have advanced the state of the art. The revival of 3-D movies with films such as Avatar (2009) and Prometheus (2012) is one of a number of developments augmenting the panoramas of 1950s classics featuring “melting tanks, flying bodies, crashing walls, awesome craters and fissures in the earth, plummeting spacecraft [and] colourful deadly rays” (Sontag 213). An emphasis on the scale of destruction and the wholesale obliteration of recognisable sites emblematic of “the city” (mega-structures like the industrial plant in Aliens (1986) and vast space ships like the “Death Star” in two Star Wars sequels) connect older films with new ones and impress the viewer with ever more extraordinary spectacle.Films that have been remade make for useful comparison. On the whole, these reinforce the continuation and predictability of some storylines (for instance, threats of extra-terrestrial invasion), but also the attenuation or disappearance of other narrative elements such as the monsters and anxieties released by mid-twentieth century atomic tests (Broderick). Remakes also highlight emerging themes requiring novel or updated critical frameworks. For example, environmental anxieties, largely absent in 1950s science fiction films (except for narratives involving colliding worlds or alien contacts) have appeared en masse in recent years, providing an updated view on the ethical issues posed by the fall of cities and communities (Taylor, “Urban”).In The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and its remakes (1956, 1978, 1993), for example, the organic and vegetal nature of the aliens draws the viewer’s attention to an environment formed by combative species, allowing for threats of infestation, growth and decay of the self and individuality—a longstanding theme. In the most recent version, The Invasion (2007), special effects and directorial spirit render the orifice-seeking tendrils of the pod creatures threateningly vigorous and disturbing (Lim). More sanctimonious than physically invasive, the aliens in the 1951 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still are fed up with humankind’s fixation with atomic self-destruction, and threaten global obliteration on the earth (Cox). In the 2008 remake, the suave alien ambassador, Keanu Reeves, targets the environmental negligence of humanity.Science, including science as fiction, enters into disaster narratives in a variety of ways. Some are less obvious but provocative nonetheless; for example, movies dramatising the arrival of aliens such as War of the Worlds (1953 and 2005) or Alien (1979). These more subtle approaches can be personally confronting even without the mutation of victims into vegetables or zombies. Special effects technologies have made it possible to illustrate the course of catastrophic floods and earthquakes in considerable scientific and visual detail and to represent the interaction of natural disasters, the built environment, and people, from the scale of buildings, homes, and domestic lives to entire cities and urban populations.For instance, the blockbuster film The Day After Tomorrow (2004) runs 118 minutes, but has an uncertain fictional time frame of either a few weeks or 72 hours (if the film’s title is to taken literally). The movie shows the world as we know it being mostly destroyed. Tokyo is shattered by hailstones and Los Angeles is twisted by cyclones the likes of which Dorothy would never have seen. New York disappears beneath a mountainous tsunami. All of these events result from global climate change, though whether this is due to human (in) action or other causes is uncertain. Like their predecessors, the new wave of disaster movies like The Day After Tomorrow makes for questionable “art” (Annan). Nevertheless, their reception opens a window onto broader political and moral contexts for present anxieties. Some critics have condemned The Day After Tomorrow for its scientific inaccuracies—questioning the scale or pace of climate change. Others acknowledge errors while commending efforts to raise environmental awareness (Monbiot). Coincident with the film and criticisms in both the scientific and political arena is a new class of environmental heretic—the climate change denier. This is a shadowy character commonly associated with the presidency of George W. Bush and the oil lobby that uses minor inconsistencies of science to claim that climate change does not exist. One thing underlying both twisting facts for the purposes of making science fiction films and ignoring evidence of climate change is an infantile orientation towards the unknown. In this regard, recent films do what science fiction disaster films have always done. While freely mixing truths and half-truths for the purpose of heightened dramatic effect, they fulfil psychological tasks such as orchestrating nightmare scenarios and all too easy victories on the screen. Uncertainty regarding the precise cause, scale, or duration of cataclysmic natural phenomena is mirrored by suspension of disbelief in the viability of some human responses to portrayals of urban disaster. Science fiction, in other words, invites us to accept as possible the flight of Americans and their values to Mexico (The Day After Tomorrow), the voyage into earth’s molten core (The Core 2003), or the disposal of lava in LA’s drainage system (Volcano 1997). Reinforcing Sontag’s point, here too there is a lack of criticism of the real social and political conditions that bring about the fears depicted in the films (223). Moreover, much like news coverage, images in recent natural disaster films (like their predecessors) typically finish at the point where survivors are obliged to pick up the pieces and start all over again—the latter is not regarded as newsworthy. Allowing for developments in science fiction films and the disaster genre, Sontag’s observation remains accurate. The films are primarily concerned “with the aesthetics of destruction, with the peculiar beauties to be found in wreaking havoc, in making a mess” (213) rather than rebuilding. The Imagination of Disaster RecoverySontag’s essay contributes to an important critical perspective on science fiction film. Variations on her “psychological point of view” have been explored. (The two discourses—psychology and cinema—have parallel and in some cases intertwined histories). Moreover, in the intervening years, psychological or psychoanalytical terms and narratives have themselves become even more a part of popular culture. They feature in recent disaster films and disaster recovery discourse in the “real” world.Today, with greater frequency than in the 1950s and 60s films arguably, representations of alien invasion or catastrophic global warming serve to background conflict resolutions of a more quotidian and personal nature. Hence, viewers are led to suspect that Tom Cruise will be more likely to survive the rapacious monsters in the latest The War of the Worlds if he can become less narcissistic and a better father. Similarly, Dennis Quaid’s character will be much better prepared to serve a newly glaciated America for having rescued his son (and marriage) from the watery deep-freezer that New York City becomes in The Day After Tomorrow. In these films the domestic and familial comprise a domain of inter-personal and communal relations from which victims and heroes appear. Currents of thought from the broad literature of disaster studies and Western media also call upon this domain. The imagination of disaster recovery has come to partly resemble a set of problems organised around the needs of traumatised communities. These serve as an object of urban governance, planning, and design conceived in different ways, but largely envisioned as an organic unity that connects urban populations, their pasts, and settings in a meaningful, psychologically significant manner (Furedi; Hutchison and Bleiker; Boano). Terms like “place” or concepts like Boano’s “place-attachment" (38) feature in this discourse to describe this unity and its subjective dimensions. Consider one example. In August 2006, one year after Katrina, the highly respected Journal of Architectural Education dedicated a special issue to New Orleans and its reconstruction. Opening comments by editorialist Barbara Allen include claims presupposing enduring links between the New Orleans community conceived as an organic whole, its architectural heritage imagined as a mnemonic vehicle, and the city’s unique setting. Though largely unsupported (and arguably unsupportable) the following proposition would find agreement across a number of disaster studies and resonates in commonplace reasoning:The culture of New Orleans is unique. It is a mix of ancient heritage with layers and adaptations added by successive generations, resulting in a singularly beautiful cultural mosaic of elements. Hurricane Katrina destroyed buildings—though not in the city’s historic core—and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, but it cannot wipe out the memories and spirit of the citizens. (4) What is intriguing about the claim is an underlying intellectual project that subsumes psychological and sociological domains of reasoning within a distinctive experience of community, place, and memory. In other words, the common belief that memory is an intrinsic part of the human condition of shock and loss gives form to a theory of how urban communities experience disaster and how they might re-build—and justify rebuilding—themselves. This is problematic and invites anachronistic thinking. While communities are believed to be formed partly by memories of a place, “memory” is neither a collective faculty nor is it geographically bounded. Whose memories are included and which ones are not? Are these truly memories of one place or do they also draw on other real or imagined places? Moreover—and this is where additional circumspection is inspired by our reading of Sontag’s essay—does Allen’s editorial contribute to an aestheticised image of place, rather than criticism of the social and political conditions required for reconstruction to proceed with justice, compassionately and affectively? Allowing for civil liberties to enter the picture, Allen adds “it is necessary to enable every citizen to come back to this exceptional city if they so desire” (4). However, given that memories of places and desires for their recovery are not univocal, and often contain competing visions of what was and should be, it is not surprising they should result in competing expectations for reconstruction efforts. This has clearly proven the case for New Orleans (Vederber; Taylor, “Typologies”)ConclusionThe comparison of films invites an extension of Sontag’s analysis of the imagination of disaster to include the psychology, politics, and morality of rebuilding. Can a “psychological point of view” help us to understand not only the motives behind capturing so many scenes of destruction on screen and television, but also something of the creative impulses driving reconstruction? This invites a second question. How do some impulses, particularly those caricatured as the essence of an “enterprise culture” (Heap and Ross) associated with America’s “can-do” or others valorised as positive outcomes of catastrophe in The Upside of Down (Homer-Dixon), highlight or possibly obscure criticism of the conditions which made cities like New Orleans vulnerable in the first place? The broad outline of an answer to the second question begins to appear only when consideration of the ethics of disaster and rebuilding are taken on board. If “the upside” of “the down” wrought by Hurricane Katrina, for example, is rebuilding of any kind, at any price, and for any person, then the equation works (i.e., there is a silver lining for every cloud). If, however, the range of positives is broadened to include issues of social justice, then the figures require more complex arithmetic.ReferencesAllen, Barbara. “New Orleans and Katrina: One Year Later.” Journal of Architectural Education 60.1 (2006): 4.Annan, David. Catastrophe: The End of the Cinema? London: Lorrimer, 1975.Boano, Camillo. “‘Violent Space’: Production and Reproduction of Security and Vulnerabilities.” The Journal of Architecture 16 (2011): 37–55.Broderick, Mick, ed. Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film. London: Kegan Paul, 1996.Cox, David. “Get This, Aliens: We Just Don’t Care!” The Guardian 15 Dec. 2008 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2008/dec/15/the-day-the-earth-stood-still›. Furedi, Frank. “The Changing Meaning of Disaster.” Area 39.4 (2007): 482–89.Heap, Shaun H., and Angus Ross, eds. Understanding the Enterprise Culture: Themes in the Work of Mary Douglas. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992. Homer-Dixon, Thomas. The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006.Hutchison, Emma, and Roland Bleiker. “Emotional Reconciliation: Reconstituting Identity and Community after Trauma.” European Journal of Social Theory 11 (2008): 385–403.Lim, Dennis. “Same Old Aliens, But New Neuroses.” New York Times 12 Aug. 2007: A17.Monbiot, George. “A Hard Rain's A-gonna Fall.” The Guardian 14 May 2004.Sontag, Susan. “The Imagination of Disaster” (1965). Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Dell, 1979. 209–25.Taylor, William M. “Typologies of Katrina: Mnemotechnics in Post-Disaster New Orleans.” Interstices 13 (2012): 71–84.———. “Urban Disasters: Visualising the Fall of Cities and the Forming of Human Values.” Journal of Architecture 11.5 (2006): 603–12.Verderber, Stephen. “Five Years After – Three New Orleans Neighborhoods.” Journal of Architectural Education 64.1 (2010): 107–20.Zack, Naomi. Ethics for Disaster. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009.———. “Philosophy and Disaster.” Homeland Security Affairs 2, article 5 (April 2006): ‹http://www.hsaj.org/?article=2.1.5›.FilmographyAlien. Dir. Ridley Scott. Brandywine Productions, 1979.Aliens. Dir. James Cameron. Brandywine Productions, 1986.Avatar. Dir. James Cameron. Lightstorm Entertainment et al., 2009.The Core. Dir. Jon Amiel. Paramount Pictures, 2003.The Day after Tomorrow. Dir. Roland Emmerich. 20th Century Fox, 2004.The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Dir. Don Siegel. Allied Artists, 1956; also 1978 and 1993.The Invasion. Dirs. Oliver Hirschbiegel and Jame McTeigue. Village Roadshow et al, 2007.Prometheus. Dir. Ridley Scott. Scott Free and Brandywine Productions, 2012Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Dir. George Lucas. Lucasfilm, 1977.Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. Dir. George Lucas. Lucasfilm, 1983.Volcano. Dir. Mick Jackson. 20th Century Fox, 1997.War of the Worlds. Dir. George Pal. Paramount, 1953; also Steven Spielberg. Paramount, 2005.Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to Oenone Rooksby and Joely-Kym Sobott for their assistance and advice when preparing this article. It was also made possible in part by a grant from the Australian Research Council.

Photo by Adhy Savala on Unsplash ABSTRACT During a crisis, when healthcare capacity becomes overwhelmed and cannot meet regular standards of patient care, crisis standards of care are invoked to distribute scarce hospital space, staff, and supplies. When transitioning between conventional standards of care and crisis standards, hospitals may have to manage resources under scarcity constraints in an intermediate phase defined as the contingency phase. While much attention has been paid to the ethics of crisis standard of care protocols, contingency measures were more widely implemented, though little exists within the literature on the ethics of contingency measures or a clearly explicated contingency standard of care. This paper addresses three ethical issues with the current contingency response to COVID-19: the lack of formalization, the risks of using short-term solutions for prolonged contingency shortages, and the danger of exacerbating health disparities through hospital-level resource allocation. To mitigate these ethical issues, I offer recommendations for reimagining resource allocation during contingency standards of care. INTRODUCTION When transitioning between conventional standards of care and crisis standards, or in situations where shortages do not immediately threaten care delivery, hospitals may have to manage scarce resources in an intermediate phase, known as the “contingency” phase.[1] While much attention has been paid to the ethics of crisis standards, less literature covers the ethics of contingency measures or a clearly explicated contingency standard of care. Many states and hospital systems do not have contingency standards of care to dictate allocation absent an event triggering crisis standards. Crisis standards of care, used when healthcare capacity becomes overwhelmed and cannot meet regular standards of patient care, reflect ethical priorities relevant in times of shortage or other emergencies. These priorities include saving the most lives, the stewardship of scarce resources, and justice relating to equitable resource distribution.[2] Crisis standards of care delineate specialized allocation protocols and triage decision-making bodies at the institutional or state levels. Crisis standards of care require formal activation at the state level, and in the absence of clear triggers or governmental willingness to use them, hospitals may adopt informal strategies to manage allocation in the form of contingency measures. The contingency phase is defined by two simultaneous goals: prevent or stall crisis-level scarcity by managing limited resources and providing patient care that is functionally equivalent to usual care.[3] In other words, allocate scarce resources with no significant health consequences to patients. However, this is an unrealistic expectation: meeting a patient’s medical needs and allocating resources on the basis of scarcity instead of medical indications can be at odds, creating ethical tension. This paper addresses three ethical issues with the current contingency response stemming from this tension: the lack of formalization, the risk of using short-term solutions for prolonged contingency shortages, and the danger of exacerbating health disparities through hospital-level resource allocation. To mitigate these ethical issues, I offer recommendations for reimagining resource allocation during contingency standards of care. l. Lack of Formalization One shortcoming of current contingency measures is that they fail to meet the same level of procedural detail and clarity as crisis standards. The early COVID-19 surges in Italy and France demonstrated the pitfalls of bedside allocation in the absence of procedural guidance. The acute scarcity of critical care resources forced doctors in these countries to make allocation decisions at the bedside, which often resulted in de facto age-based allocation as well as experiences of moral distress and shame among providers.[4] In France, medical allocation guidelines and statistics were never released to the public, raising concerns over the role of transparency in implementing crisis standards and triage guidelines and causing the public to question the trustworthiness of provider triage.[5] Though many states in the US have crisis standards of care that can be implemented in the case of a large-scale triage event, these measures vary widely. A 2020 review of 31 crisis standards of care in the US found that only 18 contained strong “ethical grounding,” 28 used “evidence-based clinical processes and operations,” 21 included “ongoing community and provider engagement, education, and communication,” and 16 had “clear indicators, triggers, and lines of responsibility.”[6] The need for standardization, public transparency, and guidelines for crisis standards of care to prevent bedside allocation has been widely recognized. However, these issues remain unresolved by public policy or legislative efforts during the contingency period before (or after) crisis standards apply. A recent public health study that observed triage team members in a high-fidelity triage simulation highlighted the challenges of making equitable frontline allocation decisions.[7] In the simulation, participants nudged patient priority status up or down depending on what they subjectively identified as morally relevant factors. Through the simulation, participants reported difficulty separating implicit biases about patient characteristics from their clinical judgment. In the absence of formal institutional or regional guidelines for allocation during contingency-level shortages, there are few to no procedural safeguards against biased, ad hoc, and non-transparent rationing. Without formalized or standardized contingency allocation guidance, providers are left to make bedside allocation decisions that are susceptible to individual biases and patterns of unintended discrimination. An example of this susceptibility is seen when hospitals allow patients who no longer benefit from ICU resources to continue occupying ICU beds. This is based on a first-come-first-served (FCFS) approach to bed allocation. FCFS is often a default for patient intake, which led to disparities in care access during the early COVID-19 pandemic. Media reports of hospitals with “plenty of space” being unwilling to accept patients from overwhelmed, lower-income hospitals illustrate that the FCFS default advantages those who could show up first to a particular hospital: often privileged, well-funded healthcare systems that were inaccessible to low-income communities.[8] FCFS is blind to several morally relevant factors, including the likelihood of survival to discharge, reciprocity (i.e. prioritizing healthcare workers), and varying degrees of access to healthcare. Therefore, it inappropriately privileges those in proximity to healthcare systems or with social connections enabling greater initial access to care.[9] During crisis standards of care, excessive mortality that would result from FCFS is mitigated through formalized system-wide triage protocols based on current patient health status and potential benefit from resources. Crisis and contingency standards may provide liability coverage for providers who reallocate critical care beds away from those who no longer benefit during periods of scarcity. This liability coverage shifts bed allocation away from an FCFS model, but only if the policy is well-defined, clearly established, and known to providers. Without a formal system to guide the process or transition from the usual method of allocation to the contingency period, contingency decisions about who gets a scarce resource may continue to operate on an implicit FCFS basis, even when approaching crisis levels of scarcity. Additionally, these decisions will fall unsustainably on individual providers or transfer center workers, leading to moral distress on the frontlines when hospitals are already strained. Lessons from the crisis and contingency responses during COVID-19 can improve future contingency responses. There are multiple ways of achieving equity during contingency allocation, ranging from hospital-level to state-level policy changes. State-wide policies and interventions to facilitate resource-sharing can relieve some of the scarcity burdens that hospitals may face during the contingency period. For example, moving ICU patients to lower levels of care once they have sufficiently recovered is a challenge for doctors, who often call other hospitals to find open beds. In these situations, providers who do not move patients who no longer benefit from ICU beds unknowingly reinforce the FCFS system in which those who arrive first keep the scarce beds, while those who arrive later or wait for one are disadvantaged by having limited access to them. State-wide patient transfer centers, often facilitated by state public health departments, present an alternative by balancing patient needs and bed distribution more equitably and efficiently than individual physicians do, as demonstrated following COVID-19 surges in hospitalization.[10] These centers aid not only in allocating open tertiary care beds, but also in identifying open beds at lower levels of care and assisting physicians with transferring out patients who can be safely downgraded and no longer benefit from tertiary care resources. However, the simplest solution is to encourage the creation of ethics guidance or protocols for contingency allocation at the hospital level. In hospitals, institutional ethics guidance can help providers navigate difficult decisions and conversations with patients. When providers face time-sensitive allocation decisions, like the allocation of open ICU beds, the guidance would be a useful tool for making transparent, principled, and ethically justified allocation decisions in real-time to mitigate the risk of ad hoc or implicit rationing. ll. Unsuited for Prolonged Resource Shortages Secondly, neither contingency nor crisis standards are currently designed to respond to prolonged strains on the healthcare system. Since the start of the pandemic, a prolonged period of staffing shortages began and is projected to persist.[11] However, both crisis and contingency standards assume that the system will eventually return to conventional standards of care. For example, as a contingency or crisis standard, many hospitals deferred elective surgeries to preserve limited resources for emergency and life-saving procedures. Massachusetts, for instance, issued a public health emergency order that required hospitals to defer 50 percent of all non-essential and non-urgent (elective) surgeries. This order demonstrates the use of this contingency measure in response to prolonged staffing and bed shortages.[12] However, the deferral of elective procedures can result in adverse long-term community health consequences. Medical conditions typically addressed through elective surgery, such as joint replacement surgeries for osteoarthritis patients, may worsen if delayed. This can result in greater numbers of acute emergencies, the need for more complex surgical procedures later, increased reliance on pain medications, and longer recovery times.[13] Without a greater understanding of long-term complications in community health, existing contingency strategies, such as the deferral of elective surgeries, may be unsuitable for prolonged shortages. This becomes a greater threat to patient safety when contingency measures inappropriately take the place of crisis standards, risking the long-term implementation of emergency measures designed for temporary use. Although some state emergency planning documents identify indicators and triggers for activating contingency and crisis operations,[14] this transition is not always clear in action. For example, New York did not implement crisis standards of care during the early COVID-19 pandemic despite being one of the hardest-hit cities in the US.[15] Other states, including California, Texas, and Florida, did not activate crisis standards of care, leaving hospitals to implement informal contingency measures that ultimately required allocation strategies very similar or identical to many crisis standards of care protocols.[16] Due to the hesitance to activate crisis standards, ad hoc contingency measures and bedside decision-making prevailed over formal triage protocols. If contingency measures are not set forth in objective documents and are inappropriately used in the place of crisis standards, these short-term measures may result in an unfair or non-transparent distribution of scarce resources. When shortages in space, staff, or supplies jeopardize the ability to provide necessary care for critically ill patients under a conventional standard of care, failures to activate crisis standards risk the inappropriate use of ad hoc contingency measures in their place. With clear contingency standards of care, the duration of an ad hoc approach could be limited. Crisis standards are defined and activated at the regional or state-wide level, but outside of hospital-specific resource limitations, there are generally no standardized indications or triggers for transitioning into and out of contingency measures. Leaving contingency needs to individual hospitals may seem beneficial but defining the contingency period at the hospital level and the crisis period at the state or regional level blurs the line about when it is appropriate for decision makers to activate crisis standards, risking delayed activation or failure to activate them at all. Therefore, it is important that state policies implement automatic triggers for activation that clearly delineate between contingency and crisis responses.[17] Automatic triggers based on validated metrics like remaining available resources can inform the appropriate decision makers about when they must activate crisis standards. These triggers should be transparent to the public, validated, and updated over time with evolving data. These automatic triggers would prevent confusion, inconsistent guidelines, and inequitable contingency allocation at the hands of distressed providers when crisis standards are needed. Defining when to begin crisis standards could help limit the length of the contingency period. This would protect against the inappropriate application of contingency measures to crisis-level scarcity and prolonged shortages that they could not sustainably ameliorate. lll. Potential to Exacerbate Health Disparities Inconsistencies in contingency allocation open the door to disparities in care and unequal distribution of scarcity burdens among different communities based on their location or health needs. This is a concern because it is unclear whether contingency measures can meet their goal of achieving functionally equivalent patient outcomes when resource allocation must be balanced with patient-centered care.[18] The care under contingency standards is meant to be functionally equivalent to regular care. The definition assumes (or may wrongly suggest) that any contingency strategy in place to avoid critical scarcity has no significant impact on patient outcomes. While functional equivalence is attainable, there is currently little research into which contingency measures achieve functionally equivalent outcomes and which patient groups may be disproportionately affected by harmful resource allocation strategies. Although the transition from contingency standards to crisis standards is defined by the inability to provide functionally equivalent care, the difference in practice may merely be a distinction between visible, immediate sacrifices to patient well-being during crises and less-obvious, long-term decrements in community health due to protracted contingency care alterations. Two common contingency measures are cause for concern over disparate patient outcomes and the attainability of functional equivalence. First, restricting emergency room visits by the patient’s degree of need has worrying consequences. In late 2021 and early 2022, hospitals in Massachusetts faced widespread staffing shortages, leading to an emergency order that restricted emergency visits to emergency needs.[19] While this order is a reasonable method of allocating limited staff in the emergency department during severe shortages, it is doubtful that the outcomes of this restriction were equivalent to usual care. Health issues that are soon-to-be emergencies are filtered out until they worsen, resulting in patients overflowing to urgent care clinics or presenting to ERs with more severe forms of sicknesses later on. Given the empirical evidence demonstrating ER treatment and admission disparities that disadvantage Black and Hispanic patients, such a measure would only exacerbate these disparities by further limiting access to needed care.[20] Second, altered staffing ratios, which stretch a limited number of providers to meet patient needs during a staffing shortage, are another concerning yet common contingency measure. Staffing allocation is often viewed similarly to the allocation of space and medical equipment, such that contingency alterations to staffing operations may not seem like they significantly jeopardize patient care quality and outwardly appear functionally equivalent.[21] However, lower ratios of qualified nurses are associated with poor outcomes such as higher inpatient mortality[22] and lower survival rates of in-hospital cardiac arrest for Black patients.[23] These examples highlight the strong potential for contingency measures to amplify social health disparities, particularly when adopted over a prolonged time frame. Lowered standards of care in crisis allocation disproportionately impact racial and ethnic minorities.[24] For example, crisis standards of care used clinical scoring systems that were not developed or validated for crisis triage to prioritize access to life-saving treatments during the COVID-19 pandemic. This practice actively gives rise to racial health disparities and discrimination against disabled patients.[25] Not only were the standards inequitable in practice, but they varied widely from state to state and sometimes even from hospital to hospital, creating disparities across and within geographic regions.[26] If contingency measures are similarly implemented across hospitals or hospital departments without standardization or advance planning to ensure equitable outcomes, it is likely that the burden of a lower standard of care will fall primarily on disadvantaged patient groups and racial minorities. However, standardization alone may be insufficient. Other factors like varying levels of details on patients’ charts between hospitals could produce unfair outcomes if used to determine patient admission or transfer priority, even if the criteria for admissions and transfers are consistent. Thus, ongoing monitoring for unintended patterns of disparity must accompany standardization to ensure that blind spots in the allocation process are identified and corrected. Bioethics has long been preoccupied with the micro-allocation of limited resources within hospitals instead of confronting the structural inequities that underlie broader scarcity and patient needs. The traditional dilemma of allocating limited hospital resources among a certain number of patients overlooks questions about how other resources have already been allocated, which patients were present at the hospital in the first place, where hospitals have (and have not) been built, and whether previous allocation strategies created bias in the broader distribution of resources. Therefore, to achieve fairness, bioethicists must pay attention to aspects of the broader distribution of resources, such as social determinants of health and the allocation of preventative resources at the public health level. One strategy for measuring and addressing these disparities is the Area Deprivation Index (ADI). The ADI quantifies the effects of race, class, and socioeconomic background by geographic region for use in public health research and the prioritization of resources.[27] It has shown promise in identifying geographic regions in need of targeted community health efforts for diabetes management based on electronic patient health records.[28] The ADI and similar tools would be useful in proactively deciding how to allocate public health resources when hospitals are strained. Moreover, through using population health and resource data, public health organizations may forecast contingency shortages allowing for the adoption of early measures to mitigate health disparities that might otherwise be amplified from hospital-level contingency allocation decisions. CONCLUSION Meeting community health needs during periods of contingency scarcity, both before and after crisis standards of care apply, will require contingency standards of care rather than a bedside ad hoc distribution of scarce resources. While it is not inherently ethically unjustifiable for hospitals to adopt measures that may lower the standard of care during contingency standards, the necessity of these measures requires that bioethicists consider how equity, transparency, and the overall aim of functional equivalence can best be achieved under conditions of scarcity. The long-term health consequences of existing contingency measures, the potential for ad hoc and inconsistent allocation of scarce resources, and the need for consensus about when it becomes appropriate to make the formal transition to crisis standards of care demand further consideration. Because contingency measures will likely amplify existing disparities as crisis standards have, hospital-level management of scarcity is inadequate. Public health measures should be adopted in parallel to anticipate and manage health needs at the community or state level when resources are strained. - [1] Altevogt, B. M., Stroud, C., Hanson, S. L., Hanfling, D., & Gostin, L. O. (2009). Guidance for Establishing Crisis Standards of Care for Use in Disaster Situations: A Letter Report. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/12749 [2] Emanuel, E. J., Persad, G., Upshur, R., Thome, B., Parker, M., Glickman, A., Zhang, C., Boyle, C., Smith, M., & Phillips, J. P. (2020). Fair Allocation of Scarce Medical Resources in the Time of Covid-19. New England Journal of Medicine, 382(21), 2049–2055. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsb2005114 [3] Alfandre, D., Sharpe, V. A., Geppert, C., Foglia, M. B., Berkowitz, K., Chanko, B., & Schonfeld, T. (2021). Between Usual and Crisis Phases of a Public Health Emergency: The Mediating Role of Contingency Measures. The American Journal of Bioethics, 21(8), 4–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2021.1925778 [4] Rosenbaum, L. (2020). Facing Covid-19 in Italy—Ethics, Logistics, and Therapeutics on the Epidemic’s Front Line. New England Journal of Medicine, 382(20), 1873–1875. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp2005492 [5] Orfali, K. (2020). What Triage Issues Reveal: Ethics in the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy and France. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 17(4), 675–679. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-020-10059-y [6] Romney, D., Fox, H., Carlson, S., Bachmann, D., O’Mathuna, D., & Kman, N. (2020). Allocation of Scarce Resources in a Pandemic: A Systematic Review of US State Crisis Standards of Care Documents. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 14(5), 677–683. https://doi.org/10.1017/dmp.2020.101 [7] Butler, C. R., Webster, L. B., Diekema, D. S., Gray, M. M., Sakata, V. L., Tonelli, M. R., & Vranas, K. C. (2022). Perspectives of Triage Team Members Participating in Statewide Triage Simulations for Scarce Resource Allocation During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Washington State. JAMA Network Open, 5(4), e227639. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.7639 [8] Dwyer, J. (2020, May 14). One Hospital Was Besieged by the Virus. Nearby Was ‘Plenty of Space.’—The New York Times. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/nyregion/coronavirus-ny-hospitals.html [9] Persad, G., Wertheimer, A., & Emanuel, E. J. (2009). Principles for allocation of scarce medical interventions. Lancet (London, England), 373(9661), 423–431. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(09)60137-9 [10] Mitchell, S. H., Rigler, J., & Baum, K. (2022). Regional Transfer Coordination and Hospital Load Balancing During COVID-19 Surges. JAMA Health Forum, 3(2), e215048. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamahealthforum.2021.5048 [11] ASPE. (2022, May 3). Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Hospital and Outpatient Clinician Workforce: Challenges and Policy Responses. ASPE. https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/covid-19-health-care-workforce [12] Executive Office of Health and Human Services. (2021). Baker-Polito Administration Provides COVID-19 Update on Mask Advisory, Hospital Support | Mass.gov. https://www.mass.gov/news/baker-polito-administration-provides-covid-19-update-on-mask-advisory-hospital-support [13] The Lancet Rheumatology. (2021). Too long to wait: The impact of COVID-19 on elective surgery. The Lancet Rheumatology, 3(2), e83. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2665-9913(21)00001-1 [14] For an example of transition planning between crisis and contingency standards, see Minnesota Department of Health. (2021). Ethical Framework for Transitions Between Conventional, Contingency, and Crisis Conditions in Pervasive or Catastrophic Public Health Events with Medical Surge Implications (Minnesota Crisis Standards of Care). https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/ep/surge/crisis/framework_transitions.pdf [15] Powell, T., & Chuang, E. (2020). COVID in NYC: What We Could Do Better. The American Journal of Bioethics, 20(7), 62–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2020.1764146 [16] Persoff, J., & Wynia, M. K. (2021). Ethically Navigating the Murky Waters of “Contingency Standards of Care.” The American Journal of Bioethics, 21(8), 20–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2021.1939810 [17] Board on Health Sciences Policy & Institute of Medicine. (2013). Indicators and Triggers. In Crisis Standards of Care: A Toolkit for Indicators and Triggers. National Academies Press (US). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK202381/ [18] Frith, L., Draper, H., Fovargue, S., Baines, P., Redhead, C., & Chiumento, A. (2021). Neither ‘Crisis Light’ nor ‘Business as Usual’: Considering the Distinctive Ethical Issues Raised by the Contingency and Reset Phases of a Pandemic. The American Journal of Bioethics, 21(8), 34–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2021.1940363 [19] Rosseau, M. (2022, January 14). New emergency orders issued to help understaffed Mass. Hospitals. Boston.Com. https://www.boston.com/news/coronavirus/2022/01/14/new-emergency-orders-issued-to-help-understaffed-mass-hospitals/ [20] Zhang, X., Carabello, M., Hill, T., Bell, S. A., Stephenson, R., & Mahajan, P. (2020). Trends of Racial/Ethnic Differences in Emergency Department Care Outcomes Among Adults in the United States From 2005 to 2016. Frontiers in Medicine, 7. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2020.00300 [21] Hick, J. L., Hanfling, D., & Wynia, M. (2022). Hospital Planning for Contingency and Crisis Conditions: Crisis Standards of Care Lessons from COVID-19. The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcjq.2022.02.003 [22] Musy, S. N., Endrich, O., Leichtle, A. B., Griffiths, P., Nakas, C. T., & Simon, M. (2021). The association between nurse staffing and inpatient mortality: A shift-level retrospective longitudinal study. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 120, 103950. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2021.103950 [23] Brooks Carthon, M., Brom, H., McHugh, M., Sloane, D. M., Berg, R., Merchant, R., Girotra, S., & Aiken, L. H. (2021). Better Nurse Staffing Is Associated With Survival for Black Patients and Diminishes Racial Disparities in Survival After In-Hospital Cardiac Arrests. Medical Care, 59(2), 169–176. https://doi.org/10.1097/MLR.0000000000001464 [24] Annas, G. J., & Crosby, S. S. (2021). Standard Racism: Trying to Use “Crisis Standards of Care” in the COVID-19 Pandemic. The American Journal of Bioethics, 21(8), 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2021.1941424 [25] Wynia, M. K., & Sottile, P. D. (2020). Ethical Triage Demands a Better Triage Survivability Score. The American Journal of Bioethics, 20(7), 75–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2020.1779412 [26] Fink, S. (2020). Ethical Dilemmas in Covid-19 Medical Care: Is a Problematic Triage Protocol Better or Worse than No Protocol at All? The American Journal of Bioethics, 20(7), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2020.1788663 [27] Knighton, A. J., Savitz, L., Belnap, T., Stephenson, B., & VanDerslice, J. (2016). Introduction of an Area Deprivation Index Measuring Patient Socioeconomic Status in an Integrated Health System: Implications for Population Health. EGEMS (Washington, DC), 4(3), 1238. https://doi.org/10.13063/2327-9214.1238 [28] Kurani, S. S., Lampman, M. A., Funni, S. A., Giblon, R. E., Inselman, J. W., Shah, N. D., Allen, S., Rushlow, D., & McCoy, R. G. (2021). Association Between Area-Level Socioeconomic Deprivation and Diabetes Care Quality in US Primary Care Practices. JAMA Network Open, 4(12), e2138438. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.38438

Prelude: 2020 in Words Each year the Australian National Dictionary Centre, based at the Australian National University (ANU), selects “a word or expression that has gained prominence in the Australian social landscape”. In 2020, “iso” took out first place, with “bubble” following close behind. On the Centre’s website, Senior Researcher Mark Gywnn explains that “iso” was selected not only for its flexibility, merrily combining with other words to create new compound words (for instance “being in iso”, doing “iso baking” and putting on “iso weight”), but also because it “stood out as a characteristically Aussie abbreviation” (Australian National Dictionary Centre). Alongside the flexibility of the word “iso” and its affinity with the Australian English tradition of producing and embracing diminutives, iso’s appeal might well be that it does not carry the associations that the word “bubble” has acquired in the time of COVID. While COVID-19 has put many of us in various forms of “iso”, the media imagery—and indeed experiences—of many older people living in residential aged care during COVID has shifted some of the associations of the word “bubble”, heightening its associations with fragility and adding vulnerability and helplessness into the mix. 2020 was not the first time “bubble” has appeared in the Australian word of the year list. In 2018 “Canberra bubble” took out the first spot. What interests us about bubble’s runner-up position behind “iso” in 2020’s word of the year is what this might also reveal about the way ideas of independence vs dependence, and youthfulness vs aged underlie and inflect new usages of these words. In the era of COVID-19, the buoyancy of “iso” is tied to its association with a particular kind of Aussie-youth-speak, while the sense of heaviness and negative resonances that now accompany the word bubble are tied to its associations with the experiences of those in aged care. In 2020 “bubble”—a word that has primarily been associated with children and the child-like (bubble baths, bubble tea)—took on new associations and overtones. As the pandemic unfolded, “bubble” also became intertwined with media depictions of and popular discourses around those in later life, many of whom experienced “iso” much more brutally than the easy-Aussie-speak of “iso” would convey. There is much less play—and a lot less mingling—in the Australian National Dictionary Centre description of new uses of the word “bubble”: “a district, region, or a group of people viewed as a closed system, isolating from other districts, regions, or groups as a public health measure to limit the spread of Covid-19”. There have been various kinds of “closed system[s]”, isolated groups and regions constructed in the management of the pandemic, but there is one group—and one kind of location—that has been “bubbled” in quite specific ways. While the sectioning off and isolating of older age people in the name of protecting their health has often been ineffectively—and in some places, disastrously—managed in terms of disease prevention, it has been very effective in reducing the rights and voices of those it acts in the name of. Speaking from Ireland but commenting on the situation in the UK and parts of Europe, Anne Fuchs and colleagues write that “the discursive homogenization and ‘frailing’ of the over 65s meant that people in this category were an object of public discourse rather than participants in the debate” (2). In many instances the “bubbling” of older people, particularly those in aged care residences, has served to both isolate and render largely voiceless the residents of these care homes. Although the global impact of COVID-19 on the aged has been significant, including across many affluent societies, it has been particularly disastrous in Australia. At the time of writing (1 January 2021), of the 909 COVID-related deaths in Australia to date, 693 have been of people aged 80 or over: in other words, more than 75% of COVID-related deaths in Australia have been of people over 80. According to the federal government’s records of COVID-19 deaths by age group and sex, 685 of these deaths have been of aged care residents. It is not surprising therefore that many speak of the heavy impact of COVID-19 on older people as a form of genocide. Public discourse and government policies and priorities around COVID-19 have thrown into relief and exacerbated some of the deeply troubling ways that older people, particularly those living in aged care residences, are not recognised or treated as “equal partners in our future” (Royal Commission into Aged Care 1). Both the management of and public discourse around COVID-19 have highlighted and escalated the forms of ageism, especially ageism around later life, that have become embedded in Australian culture. In late 2019 the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety released its Interim Report, titled simply Neglect. In the Foreword, the commissioners write: the Australian community generally accepts that older people have earned the chance to enjoy their later years, after many decades of contribution and hard work. Yet the language of public discourse is not respectful towards older people. Rather, it is about burden, encumbrance, obligation and whether taxpayers can afford to pay for the dependence of older people. (Royal Commission into Aged Care 1) Written and released before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Interim Report highlighted the “fundamental fact that our aged care system essentially depersonalises older people” (Royal Commission into Aged Care 6) and identified many ways “the aged care system fails to meet the needs of our older, often very vulnerable, citizens” (Royal Commission into Aged Care 1). In 2020 we saw some of the effects of these failures in the often disastrous mismanagement of disease transmission prevention in many aged care residences in Australia. Equally troubling, the resulting deaths have at times been accompanied by a general acceptance of the loss of so many in later life to COVID-19. The fact that these deaths are often regarded as somehow more inevitable, or as less significant than the deaths of others, is an indication of how deeply “Australia has drifted into an ageist mindset that undervalues older people and limits their possibilities” (Royal Commission into Aged Care 1). It assumes that one’s later-life years are of less significance and value (to oneself, to the community) than one’s younger years. At various times in the pandemic, sizable parts of the global population have been variously asked, advised, or required by their governments to remain within their household or residential “bubble”. These COVID-related “bubbles” are more buoyant for some. Jackie Gulland has written a feminist analysis of the ways that the UK COVID-19 lockdown rules are premised on “neo-liberal assumptions about the family as autonomous and sufficient for the provision of reproductive labour” (330). In many places the requirement to stay within one’s “household bubble” both assumes that the home is safe for all, and that most care and dependency requirements are provided and received within a household. As Gulland’s essay demonstrates, the idea of the household bubble constructs an image or idea of who and what constitutes a household, and which relationships “count”. Drawing on critiques of neo-liberal and able-ist ideas about autonomy by feminist and disability scholars, Gulland “shows how the failure of policymakers to take account of interdependency has made lockdown more difficult for carers and those in receipt of care” (330). In this essay we look at some of the ways that the required and/or imagined COVID-19 bubbles for people in later life are thought of differently to the COVID-19 bubbles that younger, and mixed age, households are imagined as forming. This is particularly the case, we argue, for those in aged care residences. Younger and mixed age COVID bubbles often include extended or linked households (as we will discuss below in relation to the idea of the compassionate bubble) and function as a bubble that can link and enclose. In contrast, COVID bubbles in and for aged care and those in later life, work to isolate and separate. They function as bubbles that close off and shut out, as if placing the older person and older people behind glass (in some cases, quite literally). Likewise, while the COVID-19 bubbles for the “general” population (a category from which those in later life are often excluded) are regarded as temporary structures that will in time be dissolved to re-allow social movement and intermingling, the later life and aged care COVID-19 bubble is imagined very differently. This is because it is overlaid upon a pre-existing conception of later life—and in particular the fourth age—as itself a kind of bubbled existence, a fragile state held somewhat separate and apart from the general population and moving inexorably toward death—a bubble that pops. Bubbling the Fourth Age The idea that later life can be divided into different stages and ages has a long history, although the shape, meaning and valuing of different ages in later life is historically specific. Back in the late 1980s the Cambridge historian Peter Laslett proposed that rather than falling into three main stages—childhood, adulthood and old age—there are in fact four stages and that “later life can be divided into a ‘third age’ and a ‘fourth age’” (Gilleard and Higgs, “The Fourth Age” 368). Laslett’s distinction between a third age (active and characterised by personal fulfillment) and a fourth age (for Laslett an age of infirmity) has become increasingly significant in both age studies and in the provision and imagining of aged care. While the third age is increasingly depicted as something that, when managed “successfully”, can expand and fill with rich experiences and rewards (assuming one has the economic and social privilege and mobility to embrace these rich offerings—see Katz and McHugh cited in Zeilig, “Critical Use of Narrative”), the fourth age, on the other hand, is associated with frailty, increased dependence, vulnerability, precarity (see Lloyd; Gilleard and Higgs; and Morganroth Gullette on the fourth age). Of course, experiences of vulnerability, dependency and precarity run throughout the life course and cannot be reduced to chronological age. However, the distinction between a third and fourth age tends to assume that once one “leaves” the third age, it is a one-way path to “the three ‘Ds’: decrepitude, dependence, and death” (Laslett). The fourth age becomes associated with those aspects of ageing that are culturally rejected and pushed aside—in particular physical dependence which, as in much able-ist thinking, is rendered abject. As Morganroth Gullette has argued, a “savage contradiction” underlies and fuels this distinction, as “fantasies of the longevity bonanza proliferate alongside growing terrors of living too long” and becoming a “‘burden’” (21). In other words, those aspects of ageing—indeed those aspects of being human—that are seen as undesirable and/or abject are associated with the fourth age and imagined as somehow exclusive to it: they are placed elsewhere, contained in a fourth age “bubble”. The understanding of the fourth age as a kind of bubble is evident in and enabled by various kinds of cultural representations and institutional discourses around later life, including the kind of language used (particularly language connoting precarity and fragility and liminality) and recurrent media imagery in which people in their “fourth age” are depicted as mentally and physically out of reach (for instance isolated behind glass). Legislation around the movements of residents, visitors, and staff in aged care residence does not simply create “protective” bubbles around aged care residences but also constructs and imagines these residences and their inhabitants as “bubbled”, removed, and voiceless. Vulnerability, ephemerality, precarity and decline have become increasingly significant in representations of and discourses around ageing. Much of the media coverage of those in later life, particularly those living in aged care residences, has further fuelled what Sally Chivers has called the “nursing home specter” and delivered, in heightened and often spectacularised form, the “life-course narrative that dominant culture provides—an unliveable mind and unrecognizable body, mountainous expense” (Morganroth Gullette, 24). The discourse on ageing is characterised by the use of metaphor and metonymy, of which “the bubble” or “bubbling” is only one notable example. The culture of fear that surrounds the fourth age stems from the presumption that ageing inevitably leads to decay and decline in quality of life, and that the experience of ageing is characterised by various forms of physical and cognitive deterioration, such as dementia. Cultural gerontologist Hannah Zeilig has drawn attention to the pervasive use of metaphors—in both medical journals and mass media reports—to describe the experience of living with dementia. These metaphors attempt to capture and simplify the complexities of being, speaking, and knowing experienced by people with dementia. They are frequently used to communicate these experiences to people who do not live with dementia. The cultural metaphors of dementia are potent examples of ageism. They are not neutral in their connotations or implicit value judgements. These metaphors reveal wider social anxieties around ageing, despite the fact that people in their 40s and 50s can have dementia (Dementia Australia). As Zeilig has pointed out, many of these metaphors have presented a negative framing of dementia, describing the rising numbers of dementia diagnoses in apocalyptic, biblical terms such as “plague”, “crisis”, and “epidemic” (“Cultural Metaphor” 260). While this hyperbole may be grounded in statistics and the realities of an ageing population, it has nevertheless been alarming. This rhetoric has often been a necessary tactic for dementia organisations as part of their efforts to secure media coverage, raise public awareness of dementia, and lobby for increased government and private investment in funding research and support services. Despite these noble intentions, this rhetoric can risk excluding or marginalising the voices of people living with dementia. Some of the metaphors that have been used to describe dementia are particularly dehumanising and stigmatising, such as the perception of Alzheimer’s disease as a form of “living death”. This conception of Alzheimer’s, which Susan M. Behuniak has observed in both scholarly and popular discourse, elicits strong negative emotional responses of revulsion and fear. It constructs people with Alzheimer’s as abject zombie-like figures living a half-life or twilight existence. These trends in dementia discourse that Zeilig and Behuniak identified in the first half of the 2010s are also apparent in media imagery and discourse about older people in the COVID-19 pandemic. Much like the cultural narratives of dementia, these representations often reinforce the fourth age’s association with forms of vulnerability, decline and decay that are rendered abject. In contrast to this negative framing of both dementia and the fourth age, the trope of “living in a bubble” can also present a more ambivalent conception of both living with dementia and, by extension, the sociocultural experience of living in the fourth age during the time of COVID-19. “Bubbling” can serve a protective function for the person living with dementia by reducing sensory overload and cognitive confusion that may lead to anxiety and emotional distress. In dementia care, bubble wands and bubble wrap are two of the most commonly used tools in sensory therapy for reducing anxiety and agitation, and providing comfort (DailyCaring). These examples remind us of the materiality of the bubble, which functions as both cultural trope and material condition that affects people’s lives (to borrow from Helen Deutsch and Felicity Nussbaum, cited in Vivian Sobchack’s essay on metaphor and materiality). Within the diversity and range of caring practices encompassed by the trope of “bubbling”, there is clear potential for the bubble to be enabling, rather than disabling, if it is used to enhance quality of life and wellbeing for older people, rather than to separate, marginalise and isolate. Despite the multivalent possibilities of the bubble for enhancing quality of life for people with dementia, the bubble’s association with precarity has been heightened by its deployment to protect older people during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a source of ambivalence around the COVID-19 bubble, a public health response that is acknowledged as having both protective and harmful effects. It involves “bubbling” older people, especially those living in residential care, by physically isolating them and limiting their contact with family and friends to conversations mediated by digital technology or a windowpane. By restricting physical and direct contact with the outside world in order to reduce and contain transmission of the virus, the COVID-19 bubble is intended to protect the physical health of older adults. But as Karra Harrington and Martin J. Sliwinski caution, this can also risk the cognitive health and mental wellbeing of older people by creating social isolation. These concerns about the negative health impacts of the COVID-19 bubble compound the existing popular understanding of late life as isolated and isolating, perpetuating the ageist assumptions that characterise the social imaginary around the fourth age. Creating Compassionate Bubbles The distress of separation caused by COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions is felt by all generations, not just older people. Recognising the costs to our emotional and mental wellbeing of living in isolation to protect our bodies and our communities from viral invasion, Australian epidemiologist Mary-Louise McLaws has called for “a compassionate germ bubble”, modelled on New Zealand’s concept of an extended bubble that allows close contacts beyond one household. This alternative approach to “bubbling” is designed to strike a better balance between physical and mental health. Writing during Melbourne’s strict and prolonged lockdown following a second wave of cases in the winter of 2020, McLaws argued that “a compassionate germ bubble may foster resilience by reducing a sense of isolation for people living alone and friends, extended family and partners distressed by the separation”. There have been a number of creative and compassionate responses to the necessity of the COVID-19 bubble for protecting those most vulnerable to the virus. Aged care residences have developed innovative ways to safely maintain in-person visits and provide opportunities for face-to-face contact between residents and their families and friends. One example reported in the Australian media (Steger) is “The Window of Love” in Perth, which demonstrates the positive potential of the bubble—represented here as a pane of glass bordered by a painted frame—for facilitating social connection and supporting wellbeing despite restrictions on physical contact. The media reporting of these innovations tends to spectacularise the residents of these homes, reinforcing their fragility and vulnerability as they are framed behind plastic or glass. In December 2020, international media outlets The Guardian, RTE News, and Star Media posted a Reuters video story on their respective YouTube channels about a “hug bubble” created in an aged care home in Jeumont, France. This inflatable plastic tunnel allows physical touch between those living in the home and those outside it through hermetically sealed sleeves. Separating the resident from their visitors is a clear plastic sheet, which is disinfected by staff in between each visit. Recognising the importance of physical contact for wellbeing, nursing staff reported that the hug bubble has brought comfort to the residents, whose previous contact with family and friends since the outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020 had been limited to video calls or talking through a window. Viewer comments reveal divergent responses to this media story across all three YouTube channels. Some viewers applaud the innovation while others disparage the hug bubble as “cruel” and “disgraceful”. Other comments register viewers’ ambivalence, recognising the good intentions behind the idea while despairing at the need for it. Several comments offer a snapshot of the cynical, often incoherent views about the pandemic commonly found on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, while also demonstrating the persistence of ageist attitudes that regard the elderly as a burden. These negative responses are striking in contrast with the positive framing of the original media report, which is presented as a “feel good” human interest story through brief interviews with family members and nursing home staff, reflecting on the residents’ experiences using the hug bubble. This positive framing is reinforced by the gentle music track accompanying the video posted on the RTE News channel. Beyond the institutional context of aged care residences, many families and communities have also engineered solutions to reduce the stress of separation. Craving physical contact after months of isolation, they have embraced the materiality and tactility inherent in the bubble trope. People have improvised using household objects, such as plastic sleeves attached to transparent shower curtains, to build “cuddle curtains”, and “hug machines” to enable safe—and playful—physical contact. These innovations and adaptations tap into the bubble’s playful qualities, while also “going viral” as families document their creativity, delight and joy through their own video stories shared on YouTube. As we move into the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, with case numbers and the death toll continuing to climb globally, the concept of the COVID-19 bubble and its role in protecting the community will continue to be debated, refined and reconfigured in both public health responses and media discourse. Despite Australia’s relatively good fortune in terms of total number of COVID-related deaths compared to other Western nations such as the US and the UK, the disproportionately high number of deaths among Australians in aged care is a sobering reminder of the systemic failures in Australia’s aged care residences. As we move in and out of periods of social isolation, restrictions and lockdowns, it will become increasingly important to address the mental health impacts of “living in a bubble” and to consider creative, compassionate alternatives that challenge ageism and maintain quality of life for fourth age Australians. *** As COVID-19 and its management continue to reshape our world(s) and our relations to each other, its impacts continue to be unevenly felt, particularly for those in later life. For this reason, it becomes increasingly important to be alert to the ways in which “bubbling” the fourth age in response to COVID-19 risks reinforcing a homogenising view of older people as vulnerable and isolated, defenceless against viral invasion and voiceless in expressing agency and maintaining social connection. This essay responds to Hannah Zeilig’s earlier call to “radically rethink the ways in which age and ageing have been culturally configured” (“Critical Use of Narrative” 16). One of the purposes of this essay has been to critically assess some of the ways that the relatively new discourse of a fourth age—as somehow both qualitatively and quantifiably different to and separate from the third age—entails a homogenising view of older people. This view has enabled forms of ageism that have often been particularly brutal in their impact during the pandemic. In this essay we have argued that popular conceptions of and public health discourse and policy around the fourth age have often enabled—or, at the very least, supported—forms of ageism. This ageism has been further heightened through both the discourse and the imagery of the COVID-19 bubble. The fourth age, we argued, has often been understood as bubble-like: as a “stage” of life when one is somehow separated from the larger community and culture. The fourth age is configured as physically fragile and precarious, transient and temporary, ephemeral, and enclosed in—and as—its own world. Created in the name of protecting “our most vulnerable”, the bubble in the time of COVID-19 has heightened these pre-existing social anxieties around the fourth age. The challenge, as we move into the second year of the pandemic in Australia, is to find new ways of protecting the health and wellbeing of people in later life, while creating opportunities for connection, agency and play that are supported, rather than hindered, by the COVID-19 bubble. References Australian National Dictionary Centre. “2020 Word of the Year.” Canberra: School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University. 17 Nov. 2020. 12 Jan. 2021 <https://slll.cass.anu.edu.au/centres/andc/news/2020-word-year>. Behuniak, Susan M. “The Living Dead? The Construction of People with Alzheimer’s Disease as Zombies.” Ageing & Society 21 (2011): 70–92. Chivers, Sally. “‘Blind People Don’t Run’: Escaping the ‘Nursing Home Specter’ in Children of Nature and Cloudburst.” Journal of Aging Studies 34 (2015): 134–41. “COVID-19 Deaths by Age Group and Sex.” Australian Government Department of Health: Coronovirus (COVID-19) Current Situation and Case Numbers. 1 Jan. 2021 <https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert/coronavirus-covid-19-current-situation-and-case-numbers#cases-and-deaths-by-age-and-sex>. DailyCaring. “6 Alzheimer’s Sensory Activities Reduce Anxiety without Medication.” 12 Jan. 2021 <https://dailycaring.com/6-alzheimers-sensory-activities-reduce-anxiety-without-medication/>. Dementia Australia. “What Is Dementia?” 12 Jan. 2021 <https://www.dementia.org.au/about-dementia/what-is-dementia>. Fuchs, Anne, Desmond O'Neill, Mary Cosgrove, and Julia Langbein. “Report on COVID-19 – Reframing Ageing Webinar 12 June 2020.” Preprint. Aug. 2020. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.34508.44161. Gilleard, Chris, and Paul Higgs. “Aging without Agency: Theorizing the Fourth Age.” Aging and Mental Health 14.2 (2010): 121–28. Gilleard, Chris, and Paul Higgs. “Ageing Abjection and Embodiment in the Fourth Age.” Journal of Aging Studies 25.2 (2011): 135–42. Gilleard, Chris, and Paul Higgs. “The Fourth Age and the Concept of a ‘Social Imaginary’: A Theoretical Excursus.” Journal of Aging Studies 27 (2013): 368–76. Gulland, Jackie. “Households, Bubbles, and Hugging Grandparents: Caring and Lockdown Rules during COVID-19.” Feminist Legal Studies 28 (2020): 329–39. Harrington, Karra, and Martin J. Sliwinski. “The Loneliness of Social Isolation Can Affect Your Brain and Raise Dementia Risk in Older Adults.” The Conversation 4 Aug. 2020. 12 Jan. 2021 <https://theconversation.com/the-loneliness-of-social-isolation-can-affect-your-brain-and-raise-dementia-risk-in-older-adults-141752>. Laslett, Peter. A Fresh Map of Life: The Emergence of the Third Age. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989. Lloyd, Liz. “The Fourth Age.” Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology. Eds. Julia Twigg and Wendy Martin. London: Routledge, 2015. 20 Dec. 2020 <https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203097090.ch33>. McLaws, Mary-Louise. “What Is the COVID ‘Bubble’ Concept, and Could It Work in Australia?” The Conversation 1 Sep. 2020. 12 Jan. 2021 <https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-covid-bubble-concept-and-could-it-work-in-australia-144938>. Morganroth Gullette, Margaret. “Aged by Culture.” Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology. Eds. Julia Twigg and Wendy Martin. London: Routledge, 2015. 28 Dec. 2020 <https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203097090.ch3>. Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. Neglect. Interim Report Volume 1. Canberra: Commonwealth Government of Australia, 31 Oct. 2019. 12 Jan. 2021 <https://agedcare.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/interim-report>. Sobchack, Vivian. “A Leg to Stand On: Prosthetics, Metaphor, and Materiality.” In The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. 17–41. Steger, Sarah. “Coronavirus Crisis: Oryx Communities Aged Care Home Creates ‘Window of Love’ to Help Residents Stay Connected to Families.” The West Australian 5 Apr. 2020. 12 Jan. 2021 <https://thewest.com.au/news/coronavirus/coronavirus-crisis-oryx-communities-aged-care-home-creates-window-of-love-to-help-residents-stay-connected-to-families-ng-b881510245z>. Zeilig, Hannah. “The Critical Use of Narrative and Literature in Gerontology.” International Journal of Ageing and Later Life 6.2 (2011): 7-37. ———. “Dementia as a Cultural Metaphor.” The Gerontologist 54.2 (2013): 258–67. ———. “What Do We Mean When We Talk about Dementia? Exploring Cultural Representations of ‘Dementia’.” Working with Older People 19.1 (2015): 12–20.

IntroductionCroquembouche, blast chillers, and plating up—these terms have become normal to ordinary Australians despite Adriano Zumbo’s croquembouche recipe taking more than two hours to complete and blast chillers costing thousands of dollars. Network Ten’s reality talent quest MasterChef Australia (MCA) has brought fine dining and “foodie” culture to a mass audience who have responded enthusiastically. Vicariously “tasting” this once niche lifestyle is empowering viewers to integrate aspects of “foodie” culture into their everyday lives. It helps them become “everyday foodies.” “Everyday foodies” are individuals who embrace and incorporate an appreciation of gourmet food culture into their existing lifestyles, but feel limited by time, money, health, or confidence. So while a croquembouche and blast chiller may be beyond a MCA viewer’s reach, these aspects of “foodie” culture can still be enjoyed via the program. The rise of the “everyday foodie” challenges criticisms of vicarious consumption and negative discourses about reality and lifestyle television. Examining the very different and specific ways in which three MCA-viewing households vicariously experience gourmet food in their adoption of the “everyday foodie” lifestyle will demonstrate the positive value of vicarious consumption through reality and lifestyle programming. A brief background on the MCA phenomenon will be provided before a review of existing literature regarding vicarious consumption and tensions in the reality and lifestyle television field. Three case studies of MCA-viewing households who use vicarious consumption to satisfy “foodie” cravings and broaden their cultural tastes will be presented. Adapted from the United Kingdom’s MasterChef, which has aired since 1990, MCA has proven to be a catalyst for the “cheffing up” of the nation’s food culture. Twenty-odd amateur cooks compete in a series of challenges, guided, and critiqued by judges George Calombaris, Gary Mehigan, and Matt Preston. Contestants are eliminated as they move through a series of challenges, until one cook remains and is crowned the Master Chef of that series. Network Ten’s launch of MCA in 2009 capitalised on the popularity of reality talent quests that grew throughout the 2000s with programs such as Popstars (2000–2002), Australian Idol (2003–2009), X Factor (2005, 2010–) and Australia’s Got Talent (2007–). MCA also captures Australian viewers’ penchant for lifestyle shows including Better Homes and Gardens (1995–), Burke’s Backyard (1987-2004), The Living Room (2012–) and The Block (2003–2004, 2010–). The popularity of these shows, however, does not match the heights of MCA, which has transformed the normal cooking show audience of 200,000 into millions (Greenwood). MCA’s 2010 finale is Australia’s highest rating non-sporting program since OzTAM ratings were introduced in 2001 (Vickery). Anticipating this episode’s popularity, the 2010 Federal Election debate was moved to 6.30pm from its traditional Sunday 7.30pm timeslot (Coorey; Malkin). As well as attracting extensive press coverage and attention in opinion pieces and blogs, the level of academic attention MCA has already received underscores the show’s significance. So far, Lewis (Labours) and Seale have critiqued the involvement of ordinary people as contestants on the show while Phillipov (Communicating, Mastering) explores tensions within the show from a public health angle. While de Solier (TV Dinners, Making the Self, Foodie Makeovers) and Rousseau’s research does not focus on MCA itself, their investigation of Australian foodies and the impact of food media respectively provide relevant discussion about audience relationships with food media and food culture. This article focuses on how audiences use MCA and related programs. Vicarious consumption is presented as a negative practice where the leisure class benefit from another’s productivity (Veblen). Belk presents the simple example that “if our friend lives in an extravagant house or drives an extravagant car, we feel just a bit more extravagant ourselves” (157). Therefore, consuming through another is viewed as a passive activity. In the context of vicariously consuming through MCA, it could be argued that audiences are gaining satisfaction from watching others develop culinary skills and produce gourmet meals. What this article will reveal is that while MCA viewers do gain this satisfaction, they use it in a productive way to discipline their own eating and spending habits, and to allow them to engage with “foodie” culture when it may not otherwise be possible. Rather than embrace the opportunity to understand a new culture or lifestyle, critics of reality and lifestyle television dismiss the empowering qualities of these programs for two reasons. The practice of “advertainment” (Deery 1)—fusing selling and entertainment—puts pressure on, or excludes, the aspirational classes who want, but lack the resources to adopt, the depicted lifestyle (Ouellette and Hay). Furthermore, such programs are criticised for forcing bourgeois consumption habits on its viewers (Lewis, Smart Living) Both arguments have been directed at British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. Oliver’s latest cookbook Save with Jamie has been criticised as it promotes austerity cooking, but costs £26 (approx. 48AUD) and encourages readers to purchase staple ingredients and equipment that total more than £500 (approx. 919AUD) (Ellis-Petersen). Ellis-Petersen adds that the £500 cost uses the cheapest available options, not Oliver’s line of Tefal cooking equipment, “which come at a hefty premium” (7). In 2005, Oliver’s television series Jamie’s School Dinners, which follows his campaign for policy reform in the provision of food to students was met with resistance. 2008 reports claim students preferred to leave school to buy junk food rather than eat healthier fare at school (Rousseau). Parents supported this, providing money to their children rather than packing healthy lunches that would pass school inspections (Rousseau). Like the framing of vicarious consumption, these criticisms dismiss the potential benefits of engaging with different lifestyles and cultures. These arguments do not recognise audiences as active media consumers who use programs like MCA to enhance their lifestyles through the acquisition of cultural capital. Ouellette and Hay highlight that audiences take advantage of a multitude of viewing strategies. One such strategy is playing the role of “vicarious expert” (Ouellette and Hay 117) who judges participants and has their consumption practices reinforced through the show. While audiences are invited to learn, they can do this from a distance and are not obliged to feel as though they must be educated (Ouellette and Hay). Viewers are simply able to enjoy the fantasy and spectacle of food shows as escapes from everyday routines (Lewis, Smart Living). In cases like Emeril Live where the host and chef, Emeril Lagasse “favors [sic] showmanship over instruction” (Adema 115–116) the vicarious consumption of viewing a cooking show is more satisfying than cooking and eating. Another reason vicarious consumption provides pleasure for audiences is because “culinary television aestheticises food,” transforming it “into a delectable image, a form of ‘gastro-porn’ […] designed to be consumed with the eyes” (de Solier, TV Dinners 467). Audiences take advantage of these viewing strategies, using a balance of actual and vicarious consumption in order to integrate gourmet food culture into their pre-existing lifestyle, budget, and cooking ability. The following case studies emerged from research conducted to understand MCA’s impact on households. After shopping with, and interviewing, seven households, the integration of vicarious and actual food consumption habits was evident across three households. Enjoying food images onscreen or in cookbooks is a suitable substitute when actual consumption is unhealthy, too expensive, time consuming, or daunting. It is this balance between adopting consumption habits of a conventional “foodie” and using vicarious consumption in contexts where the viewer sees actual consumption as unreasonable or uncomfortable that makes the “everyday foodie.” Melanie—Health Melanie is 38 years old and works in the childcare industry. She enjoys the “gastro-porn” of MCA and other food media. Interestingly she says food media actually helps her resist eating sumptuous and rich foods: Yeah, like my house is just overrun by cookbooks, cooking magazines. I have Foxtel primarily for the Food Network […] But I know if I cooked it or baked it, I would eat it and I’ve worked too hard to get where I am physically to do that. So I just, I read about it and I watch it, I just don’t do it. This behaviour supports Boulos et al.’s finding that while the Food Network promotes irresponsible consumption habits, these programs are considered a “window into a wider social and cultural world” rather than food preparation guides (150). Using vicarious consumption in this way means Melanie feels she does not “cook as much as what a true foodie would cook,” but she will “have low fat and healthy [options] whenever I can so I can go out and try all the fancy stuff cooked by fancy people.” MCA and food media for Melanie serves a double purpose in that she uses it to restrict, but also aid in her consumption of gourmet food. In choosing a chef or restaurant for the occasions where Melanie wants to enjoy a “fancy” dining experience, she claims food media serves as an educational resource to influence her consumption of gourmet food: I looked up when I was in Sydney where Adriano Zumbo’s shop was to go and try macarons there […] It [MCA] makes me aware of chefs that I may not have been aware of and I may go and … seek that [their restaurants/establishments] out […] Would Adriano Zumbo be as big as he is without MasterChef? No. And I’m a sucker, I want to go and try, I want to know what everyone’s talking about. Melanie’s attitudes and behaviour with regards to food media and consumption illustrates audiences’ selective nature. MCA and other food media influence her to consume, but also control, her consumption. Curtis and Samantha—Broadening Horizons Time and money is a key concern for many “everyday foodies” including Curtis’ family. Along with his wife Samantha they are raising a one-year-old daughter, Amelia. Curtis expressed a fondness for food that he ate while on holiday in the United States: I guess in the last few weeks I’ve been craving the food that we had when we were in America, in particular stuff like pulled pork, ribs, stuff like that. So I’ve replicated or made our own because you can’t get it anywhere around Brisbane like from a restaurant. When talking about cooking shows more generally, Curtis speaks primarily about cooking shows he watches on Foxtel that have a food tourism angle. Curtis mentions programs including Cheese Slices, The Layover and Man v. Food. The latter of these shows follows Adam Richman around the United States attempting to conquer eating challenges set at famous local establishments. Curtis describes his reaction to the program: I say woah that looks good and then I just want to go back to America. But instead of paying thousands of dollars to go, it’s cheaper to look up a recipe and give it a go at home. Cookbooks and food television provide their viewers not only with a window through which they can escape their everyday routines but, as Curtis points out, inspiration or education to cook new dishes themselves. For money conscious “everyday foodies”, the cooking demonstration or mere introduction of a dish broadens viewers’ culinary knowledge. Curtis highlights the importance of this: Otherwise [without food media] you’d be stuck cooking the same things your mum and dad taught you, or your home economics teacher taught you in high school. You’d just be doing the same thing every day. Unless you went out to a restaurant and fell in love with something, but because you don’t go out to restaurants every day, you wouldn’t have that experience every day […] TV gives you the ability—we could flick over to the food channel right now and watch something completely amazing that we’ve never done before. His wife Samantha does not consider herself an adventurous eater. While she is interested in food, her passion lies in cakes and desserts and she jokes that ordering Nando’s with the medium basting is adventurous for her. Vicarious consumption through food media allows Samantha to experience a wider range of cuisines without consuming these foods herself: I would watch a lot more variety than I would actually try. There’s a lot of things that I would happily watch, but if it was put in front of me I probably wouldn’t eat it. Like with MasterChef, I’m quite interested in cooking and stuff, but the range of things [ingredients and cuisines] […] I wouldn’t go there. Rose and Andrew—Set in Their Ways Rose and her husband Andrew are a “basically retired” couple and the parents of Samantha. While they both enjoy MCA and feel it has given them a new insight on food, they find it easier to have a mediated engagement with gourmet food in some instances. Andrew believes MCA is: Taking food out of this sort of very conservative, meat, and three vegetables thing into […] something that is more exotic, for the want of a better word. And I guess that’s where we’ve—we follow it, I follow it. And saying, ‘Oh, geez it’d be nice to do that or to be able to do that,’ and enjoy a bit of creativity in that, but I think it’s just we’re probably pretty set in our ways probably and it’s a bit hard to put that into action sometimes. Andrew goes on to suggest that a generational gap makes their daughters, Samantha and Elle more likely to cook MCA-inspired meals than they are: See Samantha and Elle probably cook with that sort of thing [herbs] more and I always enjoy when they do it, but we probably don’t […] We don’t think about it when we go shopping. We probably shop and buy the basic things and don’t think about the nicer things. Andrew describes himself as “an extremely lazy reader” who finds following a recipe “boring.” Andrew says if he were tempted to cook an MCA-inspired dish, it is unlikely that the required ingredients would be on-hand and that he would not shop for one meal. Rose says she does buy the herbs, or “nicer things” as Andrew refers to them, but is hesitant to use them. She says the primary barrier is lacking confidence in her cooking ability, but also that she finds cooking tiring and is not used to cooking with the gas stove in her new home: Rose: I also think that I probably leave my run late and by night time I’m really tired and my feet are hurting and I tend to think ‘Oh I’ll just get something ready’ […] I know that probably sounds like a lame excuse, but yeah, it’s probably more the confidence thing I think. I often even buy the things [ingredients] to do it and then don’t make it. I’m not confident with my stovetop either. Researcher: Oh why—can you please explain more about that?Rose: Well it’s a gas stovetop and I used to have the electric. I felt like I could main—I could control the setting—the heat—better on it. Rose, in particular, does not let her lack of confidence and time stop her from engaging with gourmet food. Cookbooks and cooking shows like MCA are a valuable channel for her to appreciate “foodie” culture. Rose talks about her interest in MCA: Rose: I’m not a keen cook, but I do enjoy buying recipe books and looking at lovely food and watching—and I enjoyed watching how they did these beautiful dishes. As for the desserts, yes they probably were very fancy, but it was sort of nice to think if you had a really special occasion, you know […] and I would actually get on the computer afterwards and look for some of the recipes. I did subscribe to their magazine […] because I’m a bit of a magazine junkie.Researcher: What do you get out of the recipe books and magazines if you say you’re not a keen cook?Rose: I’d just dream about cooking them probably. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? But, and also probably inspire my daughters […] I like to show them “oh, look at this and this” or, you know, and probably quite often they will try it or—and one day I think I will try it, but whether I ever do or not, I don’t know. Rose’s response also treats the generation gap as a perceived barrier to actual consumption. But while the couple feel unable to use the knowledge they have gained through MCA in their kitchen, they credit the show with broadening the range of cuisines they would eat when dining out: Andrew: You know, even when we’ve been to—I like Asian food in Australia, you know, Chinese, Thai, any of those sorts of foods.Rose: Indian. Andrew: Indian, yeah I like that in Australia.Rose: Which we have probably tried more of since the likes of MasterChef.Andrew: Yeah.Rose: You know, you—and even sushi, like you would never have ever […]Andrew: Gone to sushi previously. And I won’t eat sashimi, but the sushi bar is all right. Um […] but [I] did not enjoy Chinese food in places like Hong Kong or Singapore. As the couple does not seek educational information from the show in terms of cooking demonstration, they appear more invested in the progress of the contestants of the show and how they respond to challenges set by the judges. The involvement of amateur cooks makes the show relatable as they identify with contestants who they see as potential extensions of themselves. Rose identifies with season one winner, Julie Goodwin who entered the program as a 38-year-old mother of three and owner of an IT consulting business: Rose: Well Julie of course is a—I don’t like to use the word square, but she’s sort of like a bit of an old fashioned lady, but you know, more like basic grandma cooking. But […]Andrew: She did it well though.Rose: Yes, yeah. Andrew: And she, she probably—she progressed dramatically, you know, from the comments from when she first started […] to winning. In how she presented, how she did things. She must have learnt a lot in the process is the way I would look at it anyway. Rose: And I’ve seen her sort of on things since then and she is very good at like […] talking about and telling you what she’s doing and—for basic sort of cook—you know what I mean, not basic, but […] for a basic person like me. Although Rose and Andrew feel that their life stage prevents has them from changing long established consumption habits in relation to food, their choices while dining out coupled with a keen interest in food and food media still exemplifies the “everyday foodie” lifestyle. Programs like MCA, especially with its focus on the development of amateur cooks, have allowed Rose and Andrew to experience gourmet food more than they would have otherwise. Conclusion Each viewer is empowered to live their version of the “everyday foodie” lifestyle through adopting a balance of actual and vicarious consumption practices. Vicariously tasting “foodie” culture has broadened these viewers’ culinary knowledge and to some extent has broadened their actual tastes. This is evident in Melanie’s visit to Adriano Zumbo’s patisserie, and Rose and Andrew’s sampling of various Asian cuisines while dining out, for example. It also provides pleasure in lieu of actual consumption in instances like Melanie using food images as a disciplinary mechanism or Curtis watching Man v. Food instead of travelling overseas. The attitudes and behaviours of these MCA viewers illustrate that vicarious consumption through food media is a productive and empowering practice that aids audiences to adopt an “everyday foodie” lifestyle. References Adema, Pauline. “Vicarious Consumption: Food, Television and the Ambiguity of Modernity.” Journal of American and Comparative Cultures 23.3 (2000): 113–23. Belk, Russell. “Possessions and the Extended Self.” Journal of Consumer Research 15.2 (1988): 139–68. 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