Politicising pandemics: Evidence from US media coverage of the World Health Organisation
| Published date | 01 May 2023 |
| Author | Jeffrey King,Andrew Lugg |
| Date | 01 May 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.13187 |
Global Policy. 2023;14:247–259.
|
247
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/gpol
1 | POLITICISING A PANDEMIC
During the COVID- 19 pandemic, the World Health
Organisation (WHO) was widely critici sed. Nowhere
was this criticism more visible than in the United States
(US), where then President Donald Trump disparaged
the organisation frequently, declaring: “The W.H.O re-
ally blew it. For some reason, funded by the United
States, yet very China centric” (Trump, April 7 2020).
Trump repeatedly attempted to shift attention (and
blame) to the organisation as death tolls and public
concern mounted. These statements, many of them
false and misleading, circulated widely in the med ia,
potentially influencing the views of US citizens (Qiu &
Bouchard,2020; Riz zo,2020). For instance, in June
2020, 71 percent of US citizens had heard – and 25
percent believed – conspiracy theories suggesting the
pandemic was “planned” (Schaef fer,2020). These at-
tacks helped to foster discord over appropriate public
health responses to the pandemic, inc luding on testing,
vaccines, and mitigation (Dean et al.,2021). Many com-
mentators suggest that this politicisation of the WHO
not only hurt its legitimacy but also hin dered the global
response to the virus (Patrick, 2020; Pevehou se,2020).
How did the WHO become so politic ised in the US
during the COVID- 19 pandemic? Moreover, was this a
singular instance or is this part of a larg er trend in the
contestation of IOs? The WHO case is puzzling given
that it is often perceived as one of the most legitim ate
International Organisations (IOs) globally (see Dellmuth
et al.,2022).1 Yet, this high level of legitimacy did not
prevent Donald Trump and allies from attempting to
shift blame to the WHO during one of the worst gl obal
public crises on record. A growing volume of IR sch olar-
ship seeks to better understand when and why IOs be -
come politicised and the co nsequences it has for their
legitimacy and operation (Buchanan & Keohane,2006;
Dür & Schlipphak, 20 21; Dellmuth & Tallberg, 2021;
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Politicising pandemics: Evidence from US media coverage
of the World Health Organisation
JeffreyKing1 | AndrewLugg2,3
Received: 11 May 2022
|
Revised: 12 January 2 023
|
Accepted: 16 Januar y 2023
DO I: 10 .1111/17 58- 589 9.13 187
This is an open ac cess article under t he terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which perm its use and distributi on in
any medium, provi ded the original work is p roperly cited, the use i s non-commercial a nd no modifications o r adaptations are made.
© 2023 The Authors . Global Policy published by Durham Universi ty and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
1American Univer sity of Sharjah, Sharj ah,
United Arab Emirates
2University of N evada Las Vegas –
Political Sci ence, Las Vegas, Nevada,
USA
3World Trade Institute, Uni versity of Bern,
Bern, Switzerland
Correspondence
Andrew Lugg, Uni versity of Nevada
Las Vegas – Political Scie nce, 4505 S.
Maryland Pk wy. Mailstop 5029 Las Vegas,
NV 89154- 9900, USA.
Email: andrew.lugg@unlv.edu
Abstract
During the COVID- 19 pandemic, the World Health Organisation (WHO) was po-
liticised in the United States (US) by Donald Trump in an effort to deflect blame
as the virus spread. In this paper, we empirically investigate media coverage of
the WHO in the US to better understand how negative evaluations of interna-
tional organisations (IOs) spread. To do so, we perform quantitative text analysis
on an original corpus of over 11,000 news articles on the WHO from the New
York Times and the Washington Post between 1980 and 2020. Our text- as- data
analyses yield several noteworthy findings. First, we show that media coverage
of the WHO in the US has become more negative over time. Second, we show
that negativity increases during glo bal health crises. Third, we provide evidence
that explicit criticisms also increase during crises. Fourth, we show that “blame-
shifting” by Trump and allies was clearly observable in the US news med ia. Finally,
we show that negative stories about the WHO are shared more than positi ve ones
on social media. Our results provide uni que evidence, suggesting that the WHO
has become more politicised in t he US, which we argue creates opportunities for
politicians seeking to blame IOs dur ing crises.
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