The paper analyzes international organizations’ discourse on health communication in emergency and disaster situations, starting from two manuals: one produced by the World Health Organization (WHO) and another by the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO). The analysis focuses on the actions of these organizations, as determined through the logic of ‘intervention’, which tends to erase the social inequalities that are produced through society’s form of capital, both nationally and globally. This logic is expressed in the manuals through the notions of ‘population’, ‘emergency and disaster’ and ‘communication’. The paper concludes by indicating that the following discursive-ideological effects are produced: disconnection between emergency and disaster and social life; legitimation of inequality between nations; disengagement of the nation state in relation to inhuman social health conditions; and linear and instrumental perspectives on communication.
Discourse analysis; Ideology; Hegemony; International organizations; Health manuals