Abstract
The current “coronacrisis” instigated by many wrong attitudes in governmental epidemiological containment of COVID-19 as well as strange media informational coverage, begot a number of social and media myths that direct human understanding to terror and fear of the virus. In its turn, this fear caused panic, civil disobedience and even violent protests, e.g. “Black Revolutions” in USA and UK in spring–summer 2020. In the Chapter, we analyse the peculiarities of mythological (ideological) media coverage of COVID-19 pandemic by world media, Russian and European governmental agencies and World Health Organisation as a news media entity. Initial awkward attitudes of many governments in containing the pandemic gave rise to a number of conspiracy theories in population that instigated non-compliance with healthcare-related and other public policy measures. However, people are mainly not to blame. Administrative efforts were mainly aimed at “controlling” humans to “protect” them, especially during the first wave of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in spring 2020. In reality, this “protection” turned out to be nothing more than a “protection” of Big Brother. COVID-19 is different from any other pandemics of the past in its “comprehensive” “real-time” mass media coverage. However, this coverage appeared to be not at all comprehensive, but highly misleading. We suggest ways to overcome social fears, civil disobedience and violence to elaborate the most correct healthcare strategies for managing the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
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Notes
- 1.
That can be named everything but “self,” as it was and remains to be a compulsory requirement of government bodies to citizens.
- 2.
IS is a terrorist organisation whose activity is legally forbidden in Russia and many European countries.
- 3.
Almost any news agency starts its TV broadcast with a statement like “Today in our country N people caught the COVID-19 infection.” This is highly delusive. They must say “Today in our country tests of N additional people proved that they have COVID-19 infection.” The semantic difference is obvious.
- 4.
Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction.
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Legach, F.I., Bozhok, G.A., Sharov, K.S. (2021). Ideological Media Coverage of SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic. In: Legach, F.a.E.I., Sharov, K.S. (eds) SARS-CoV-2 and Coronacrisis. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2605-0_19
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