– DOI 10.55206/LEOO1231
Atanaska Milotinova
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
Email: amilotinov@uni-sofia.bg
Abstract: The present study examines the relationship between the so-called Spanish flu, the American suffragettes’ struggles, and the changes in public communication driven by women’s activism. While the First World War plays a significant role in these transformations, the importance of the 1918 influenza pandemic cannot be overlooked. The focus of the study is on the interplay between public crises, gender stereotypes (the stereotypes about the characteristic and roles that society believes women and men must own and perform) and their disruption, and the alterations in public communication. An interdisciplinary approach is used due to the specificity of the research subject. The methodology includes historical analysis in a diachronic perspective, communication analysis, and content analysis of media publications and speeches by presidents, senators and activists in the USA. The combination of these methods helps to better understand the importance and impact of the Spanish flu on American society, the changes in stereotypical attitudes to women, the new phenomena and approaches in public communication and the struggle for suffragette rights. The results of the analysis contribute to a better understanding of how crises affect society, how communication practices change, and what the dynamics of gender legitimization are in a societal respect. The study contributes to expanding knowledge about American women’s movement and about the changes to which the efforts of the suffragettes led in socio-cultural and communicative terms.
Keywords: public communication, communication practices, voting rights, American women’s, movement, suffragettes, crisis.
Rhetoric and Communications Journal, issue 57, October 2023