ABSTRACT
The chapter covers research questions related to “collective imagination” during global stressing situations such as the pandemic. Answering the first question (How was the image of the pandemic shaped on a global scale?) the author uses a media-aesthetic approach collecting data with the Google Image tools. The media-aesthetic analysis five-step model helps explain the mechanisms of “mankind imagination”: the virus itself was accepted as a “beautiful background”, and the facemask became a symbol of the pandemic (which can exist without a face, as an independent subject). The answer to the second research question of this chapter (How did the collective imagination view of the virus influence human behaviour?) was that neither the “global portrait” of the virus nor the facemask carried a message on the danger of the pandemic. Media-aesthetic approach opens the opportunity to register global-scale signs of collective imagination as predictors of social denial behaviour (the data shows that the virus and the pandemic images are considered as “amazing” rather than dangerous, the collective imagination did not produce images related to social responsibility).
