User:Blake.Travis/sandbox

Stigmatization and Scapegoating

One of the most common social effects of infectious disease is stigmatization and scapegoating of specific populations of people, such as immigrants or even those of a certain nationality or ethnicity^[1]. Numerous studies have shown that a major cause of stigma comes from biased media and government coverage of an infectious disease. This stigmatization tends to become more prevalent when media coverage of the disease is at its' highest, when multiple media outlets create different narratives for the disease, and when a disease is known to be highly infectious but is still relatively unfamiliar to the general population. This in turn causes the population to elicit strong emotional responses such as fear and uncertainty which leads to stigmatization by allowing the majority population to have a sense of superiority over the group that is being marginalized^[2][3][4]. It has also been shown that individuals who display collectivistic behaviors would be less prone to having a xenophobic mindset, whereas individuals who display more individualistic behaviors would be more prone to having xenophobic mindsets due to perceptions of being "more vulnerable" to the disease.^[5]

This scapegoating and stigmatization can have a wide array of consequences on both a macrosociological and a macrosociological level. For example, during the 2003 SARS outbreak at Amoy Gardens in Hong Kong, many of the individuals affected by the disease experienced stigma in every aspect of their daily lives. They were denied various services such as home delivery or maintenance, denied service at hotels and clinics, as well as experienced discrimination by their employers, friends, and family members^[2].