“Why Should I Be Scared?” Epidemic Uncertainties and Risk Construction in Emerging Infectious Disease Epidemics

ABSTRACT

The onset of emerging infectious disease epidemics is marked by uncertainties regarding the nature of the causative pathogen, mode of transmission, and preventive measures among other factors. While scientists are developing knowledge on these subjects, people must adapt to these uncertainties. We explore risk construction in the epidemic context by conceptualizing risk as a knowledge construct and identifying the constitutive elements that influence its construction. Using qualitative interviews and comparing three locations in Ghana during the 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, we argue that the construction of risk is influenced by a combination of disease, networked information, and information on enabled factors—factors triggered by the epidemic context (geographic location, government policies, absence of confirmed cases). These enabled factors, we suggest, shape the disease risk characteristics that amplify or attenuate risk perception and influence health behavior.

KEYWORDS:

• Ebola
• epidemic
• fear
• infectious disease
• risk perception

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our respondents for trusting us with their experiences and stories for this study.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ We draw on Berger and Luckmann’s (1966) use of knowledge: “everything that passes for ‘knowledge’ in society … . [to] what people ‘know’ as ‘reality’ in their everyday, non- or pre-theoretical lives” (p. 26–27).

² We use the concept of an “actor” developed in actor network theory, wherein actors are both human and nonhuman entities existing in networks of relationships. They are enabled or made active but not created by networks. As enabled actors, actants are bestowed with the ability to act, which ceases with inactivity or faltering of the network (Michael 2017; Mol 2010).

³ Networked information refers to the flow of both accurate and inaccurate information circulating in social networks.

⁴ More information on the three sites is available from the authors.

⁵ In 2022, the case fatality rate of Ebola was viewed as closer to 50 percent.

⁶ While members of the public sometimes view Ebola as airborne, owing to the large droplets in a cough or sneeze, it is not airborne in the same sense as measles or coronavirus, floating aloft in tiny particles for a period of time.

⁷ In Ghana, like most countries in Africa, unlike Europe and the United States, taxicab rides are not limited to a passenger. Multiple passengers heading the same direction or destination share the same taxicab ride, which is typically limited to four passengers per ride.

⁸ Ewusiejo is 75 miles from Elubo, Ghana’s western border with Côte d’Ivoire and 262 miles from Aflao, Ghana’s eastern border with Togo. It is about 528 miles from Paga, Ghana’s northern border with Burkina Faso.

⁹ An enabled actor (see note 2).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John K. Aggrey

John K. Aggrey is an assistant professor in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech. His research interests include the social studies of infectious diseases, risk perception, and emerging infectious disease outbreaks, with a particular focus on rural and urban populations in Africa.

Wesley Shrum

Wesley Shrum is a professor of sociology at Louisiana State University, where he supervises the Video Ethnography Laboratory. His research interests include the sociology of science and technology with a particular focus on the developing world. He is an officer of the International Visual Sociology Association, founding director of the Ethnografilm film festival in Paris, and director of the Fringe Performance Archive for the National Library of Scotland.