Nursing portrayed by the digital press during the pandemic: a qualitative approach to a health region in the Buenos Aires suburbs (Argentina, 2020-2021)

Abstract

Media discourses can be seen as emerging from sociohistorical meanings. In the context of the pandemic, social isolation has heightened the importance of the media in constructing meanings, precisely at a time when nursing –a profession traditionally marginalized– has gained renewed visibility. For this reason, we have focused on describing and analyzing news articles published in digital media within Sanitary Region V (Buenos Aires Province) between March 20, 2020, and March 31, 2021. We retrieved the news using web scraping techniques and conducted a qualitative inductive analysis on a refined database containing 419 articles.

We have identified that the initial mentions of nursing in the press primarily alluded to its proximity to contagion; only later did it become associated with the pandemic response. Working conditions, specific work processes, and professional training tended to fall outside the criteria for newsworthiness. Nursing was predominantly depicted as a predominantly female profession; the vaccination campaign was the instance in which its professional role became more evident. Despite uncertainties and ambiguities, various social actors appealed to nursing as a resource for legitimization. The use of the term 'medical' as a synonym for everything related to health frequently tended to recurrently obscure the presence of nursing staff, along with their specific roles and contributions.