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‘There Will Be A Next Time’: Media Discourse of an ‘Apocalyptic’ Vision of Immigration and Health Risks

Charles Adeyanju, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, British Columbia
adeyanju@uvic.ca

This study uses the case of Canadian media coverage of a female visitor from the Congo suspected of a deadly disease to show how “race” has been constructed and sustained in Canadian society. The paper employs critical discourse analysis to examine news articles from four major newspapers and qualitative interviews with community members. Findings show that the media use the case to problematize immigration and racial diversity in Canada. It is argued that the problematization of the non-Ebola event by the media stems from the anxiety of Canadians over the growing presence of racial minorities in Canada. The discursive construction of the non-Ebola case as a problem of immigration attracts anti-racial diversity views in the public that has a racial capacity to make sense of the uncertainty, insecurity and ambiguity of late modernity.