Medical populism

Gideon Lasco and Nicole Curato

Social Science & Medicine, 2019, vol. 221, issue C, 1-8

Abstract: Medical emergencies are staple features of today's 24/7 culture of breaking news. As politics becomes increasingly stylised, audiences fragmented, and established knowledge claims contested, health crises have become even more vulnerable to politicisation. We offer the vocabulary of medical populism to make sense of this phenomenon. We define medical populism as a political style based on performances of public health crises that pit ‘the people’ against ‘the establishment.’ While some health emergencies lead to technocratic responses that soothe anxieties of a panicked public, medical populism thrives by politicising, simplifying, and spectacularising complex public health issues.

Keywords: Populism; Public health; Moral panics; Health crisis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:221:y:2019:i:c:p:1-8

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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.12.006

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