People's response to the threat of disease is dependent on their perception of risk, which is influenced by public and private information disseminated widely by the media. While government agencies for disease control and prevention may attempt to contain the disease [3] , the general information disseminated to the public is often restricted to simply reporting the number of infections and deaths. Mass media are widely acknowleged as key tools in risk communication [4, 5] , but have been criticised for making risk a spectacle to capitalise on audience anxiety [6, 7] .