ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how the risk of global pandemics is configured in the media, and how it is seen as always originating outside the West. This characterisation results in problematic flaws in debate and policy responses. The chapter considers the language used, which often depicts the effort to control a pandemic as a war on the disease. This generates certain actors (villains, including superspreaders), produces a personification of an invisible disease, and results in the stigmatisation of certain groups, which are rightly or wrongly associated with the spread of infection.
The chapter also discusses infodemics, the uncontrollable spread of information about an ongoing infection, and the transmission of dangerous myths about measures that citizens can take. It highlights the attempts made by medics and organisations to counteract them via new media engagement. In the current COVID-19 crisis, this included extended press conferences, social media campaigns, enrolments of personalities from sport and entertainment to endorse opposing messages and support the myth-busting campaigns and other close collaborations with social media providers and industry.
The chapter also discusses some of the experimentation around using social media for rapid tracking of outbreaks, generating early warnings and timely outbreak identification.
