Dinamika herojstva i rada: analiza pandemijskoga medijskog diskursa o medicinskim radnicima Kliničke bolnice Dubrava
Heroism – Work Dynamic: Analysis of Pandemic Media Discourse Regarding the Medical Workers of Dubrava University Hospital

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with public (media) representations of medical workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, using the example of Dubrava University Hospital in Zagreb. The authors analyse medical workers’ protests and their media representations, which featured a competition between two public discourses – the heroic discourse, which often uses war metaphors, and the discourse on working and material conditions. Further, we analyse media reporting on the “party” in Dubrava University Hospital as a moment of the hero’s fall and the dissolution of the heroic discourse. The analysis showed that the media reporting, with its focus on the heroisation of workers and a focus on patients as victims of medical workers’ carelessness, ignores the discourse that takes a critical look at the working and material conditions of medical workers in the COVID-19 pandemic, but also in the health system in general. The theoretical and methodological starting points of the paper are online diachronic ethnography and critical discourse analysis, as well as media anthropology and heroism studies.

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