Cross-cultural whistle-blowing in an emerging outbreak: revealing health risks through tactic communication and rhetorical hijacking

Abstract

How do whistleblowers reveal critical issues unknown to the public during emerging epidemics to push for policy changes? Using a case study about a medical care worker (MCW) whistleblower in China during the SARS outbreak of 2003, this paper examines the ways whistleblowers navigate through complicated networks of power and mediascape to disseminate critical risk messages and call for changes.