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Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011
Making Sense Out of Newspaper Humour – The Swine Flu
Pandemic in Portugal
Gonçalo Pereira Rosa
Catholic University of Portugal, Portugal
Abstract
Using semiotic methodologies to uncover denotative and connotative meanings
following Roland Barthes’s work, our research analysed the humour published in one
Portuguese newspaper about the global build-up of the swine flu (H1N1) scare of 2009-
10. Results demonstrate that humour was much quicker than traditional journalistic
templates to assign responsibilities and depict failures in the crisis management
system, precociously suggesting that the pandemic could be just another moral panic.
Through humour, newspapers stressed the cyclic nature of health risks.
Keywords: humour, risk society, news constraints, journalism, swine flu
Introduction
Newspaper cartoons and other expressions of humour are a valuable resource to study
social trends and shared meanings, while providing information about the way social
meaning is attached to specific risk events.
Simple, easy to interpret and decode, humour reaches a section of the audience
usually not influenced by written news, and therefore not included in the overall debate
over the impacts of the risk society. Its study provides clues to design better
communication strategies for events marked by uncertainty.
Consider the headlines of two stories published in the Portuguese newspaper Público
during the global build-up which led the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare
the first pandemic of the 21st century on June 11, 2009. “The Health Line 24 will
encourage users to heal each other in a Wikipedia approach” and “Swine sue
journalists for libel and damages.” Despite the familiar template that resonates with a
newspaper style, these fragments correspond to a discursive non-sense strictu sensu.
They are only intelligible in the context of a humorous supplement, weekly published by
this newspaper. Appropriately, its motto is: “It didn’t happen, but it could have.”
The Health Line 24 was the telephone service established by the Ministry of Health to
screen potential suspects of flu-like symptoms in order to alleviate the pressure on the
patient care units. At the peak of the pandemic in Portugal, in the second and third
weeks of November 2009, the service could not respond in a satisfactory manner, thus
justifying the joke about users being forced to heal each other.
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