Paper short abstract:

This qualitative study compares the discourse of affected families, health workers and politicians (during five months of fieldwork in northern Uganda) with media conceptualization of Nodding Syndrome.

Paper long abstract:

Media and afflictive identity in post-conflict Uganda

Nodding Syndrome (NS) is an unknown affliction which has been reported to affect thousands of children in post-conflict northern Uganda, South Sudan and in Tanzania.

This qualitative study compares the discourse of affected families, health workers and politicians (during five months of fieldwork in northern Uganda) with media conceptualization (based on available mediatised reports and newspaper articles). Focus is put on how meanings of key terms related to Nodding Syndrome are produced and negotiated. Attention is being paid to the circulation of different discourses and explanatory models with a clear divide between hegemonic biomedical accounts and counter-hegemonic social-issue analyses. We argue that NS is an instance of afflictive identity obliquely recounting a people's political history.