More than 1,000 words: Visual narrative structures in CDC Instagram posts during the 2014-15 West African Ebola crisis

This major research paper (MRP) is a visual social semiotics study that identifies dominant visual narrative structures found in a series of photos posted to Instagram by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during the 2014-15 West African Ebola epidemic. Based in scholarship from fields including visual culture, public health visual communication, and global health communication, the paper identifies the characteristics of each identified visual narrative structure and how they relate to larger historical discourse in health communication. This MRP identified six major visual narrative structures across 63 relevant photos that, together, show the CDC to be an organization concerned with the following two things, amongst their other priorities: 1) the epidemiological activities and expertise of its staff, and 2) a focus on the global health security regime and, in turn, the protection of American citizens in North America over those suffering in affected African countries.