Graduation Year
2022
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.A.
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Degree Granting Department
Sociology
Major Professor
S. L. Crawley, Ph.D.
Co-Major Professor
Sara Green, Ph.D.
Committee Member
David Rubin, Ph.D.
Keywords
Capitalism, Covid-19, Health, Individualism, Narratives, Necropolitics
Abstract
As the death toll from Covid-19 in the United States exceeds 1 million in just over two years, more variants continue to emerge, threatening more waves of Covid-19 and ultimately, more deaths. Despite this, mask use continues to decline, and one third of Americans say that the pandemic is over. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been central in publicly disseminating biomedical knowledge using Twitter. The CDC’s Twitter account (@CDCgov) shares information related to the spread of Covid-19, including mitigation measures such as mask recommendations and vaccine information. I have conducted a narrative analysis of the replies to the CDC’s tweets about Covid-19 to understand narratives within the public’s response to CDC public health information dissemination. In this thesis, I demonstrate how, under capitalism, narratives of health focus on individualism, rejecting concern or responsibility for public health. A significant circulating narrative in public discourse on Twitter minimizes the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic. I argue that this narrative is evidence of the individualization of health under capitalism in the United States, and how necropolitical power is deployed through the minimization discourse, creating the conditions of slow violence and death worlds for the most vulnerable.
Scholar Commons Citation
Boe, Cassidy R., ""Are We Done?": The Minimization of Covid-19 and the Individualization of Health in the United States" (2022). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/9304
