Capstone Project Part 3: Final

Not surprisingly, COVID-19 has targeted every community out there and has sent shockwaves around the world which makes it a global issue. The virus has transferred from person to person and eventually from country to country and killed thousands of people around the world. One way or another, every nation has been affected by this pandemic. Some nations are affected more than others. During this pandemic, media has played an important role and it received massive attention throughout. For communicating public health and policy information, news media play a crucial role. Different facets of the pandemic have been present by journalists around the world. (Mach et al., 2021)

The media has the power to create different perspectives on the public. It can spread awareness and new information and can change people’s perspectives. The basic goal of the media is to inform people and keep them updated with the pandemic status. (Mach et al., 2021) According to the World Health Organization, COVID-19 is a global issue and the virus has affected communities differently. Although the virus has the same general information, small different details were displayed by the media. The media coverage will vary depending on the location of the virus. In the beginning, the virus had been covered by news outlets. At the time of the outbreak, televisions have been flooded and the media reported on the infected patients and the number of deaths. Analysts said that in some areas the coverage of the stories has been uneven and the United States is included in it. Across social media, U.S. coverage has been inflammatory. People around the world reacted differently to the breaking news of COVID-19. Some started to compare the virus with the influenza virus and some people took it as a sign of God and believed that they are being punished for their sins. In other parts of the world, different stories about COVID-19 have been exploited about the origin and public health. Media exploited the stories of the coronavirus such as virus jumped from animals to people. After research, scientists discovered that bats are the likely source of the coronavirus. (Jette, 2020)

In France, the media covered a story on the virus with the headline "The Yellow Peril" which was criticized later for racism. The Asians express their anger towards this headline. In Germany, a popular weekly magazine (Der Spiegel) published a cover on COVID-19 displaying an Asian man wearing a mask and protective suit and the headline was offensive to the Asians. The magazine faced similar criticism. The Chinese Embassy said that such moves are despised by them as they show radical discrimination and mutual blaming. The U.S. has had a more moderate tone as compared to other media coverage. In one media outlet, they addressed the outbreaks to xenophobic activity and criticize inappropriate connections with it. This raised a conflict between china and the U.S. and Beijing accused Washington of spreading terror about the outbreak. While the U.S. accused China because they lied about the Wuhan virus. China has high levels of media censorship, and its media plays a vital role to spread information about the virus. The global outbreak of coronavirus causes chaos in fragile states. (Radu, 2020) Dishonest leaders aggravate the domestic crisis and increase the conflicts with competing states. This type of conflict directly affects the population. (Mach et al., 2021) The population of conflict is likely to get affected because of their vulnerable situation. Besides the threat to public health, social and economic stresses were caused due to the pandemic and nations were introducing measures to restrict its spread. During the pandemic, different nations came together to help each other to fight against this disease. Different agencies like Red Cross started to help people especially refugees with funding. Several programs were initiated and still running to help people fighting against the virus. International Monetary Fund and World Bank mobilized funds to address health system failures. Countries with poor health facilities were assisted with medical devices. New policies and regulations were enforced by the law enforcement officers. The public adherence to the laws and policies made a huge impact. (Radu, 2020)

The pandemic and news related to it have exacerbated differences between developed nations and developing nations. Since media is important to spread information, media coverage must be authentic especially regarding public health and policy information. Overall, the differences between the media coverage can create disarray and it might change the perspective of society. Analysts have shown that there is a difference between media coverage around different parts of the world. The reason could be rivalry or racism. Media and agencies should more actively broadcast actual information. Because so many people use social media now, disease control centers such as World Health Organization must create awareness in people on these platforms.

References

Jette, A. M. (2020). Responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Physical Therapy, 100(7), 1047–1048. https://doi.org/10.1093/ptj/pzaa094

Mach, K. J., Salas Reyes, R., Pentz, B., Taylor, J., Costa, C. A., Cruz, S. G., Thomas, K. E., Arnott, J. C., Donald, R., Jagannathan, K., Kirchhoff, C. J., Rosella, L. C., & Klenk, N. (2021). News media coverage of COVID-19 public health and policy information. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00900-z

Radu, B. S. (2020). How Global Media Covers the Coronavirus. 1–11.