“…epidemics are never only about pathogens. They are also filtered through the words of newspapers, proclamations, and popular accounts — words that, like folk tales, provided frameworks for speaking about disaster.” Official COVID-19 awareness poster (2020) by the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, reimagining Shevchenko wearing a protective mask. The inscription «Борітеся — поборете» (“StruggleContinueContinue reading “Epidemics in Word and Imagination: Ukrainian Literature Between Folklore, the Press, and Science”
Tag Archives: Media
When is a Pandemic also a Metaphor?
“Given how central metaphor is to how we conceptualise the world, it was inevitable that metaphor would play a pivotal role in our understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic.” Scientifically accurate atomic model of the external structure of SARS-CoV-2. Alexey Solodovnikov (Idea, Producer, CG, Editor), Valeria Arkhipova (Scientific Сonsultant). Source: Wikimedia This blog post begins with aContinueContinue reading “When is a Pandemic also a Metaphor?”
Fin-de-Siècle Youth Magazines and their Construction of Gendered Responses to Sickness
“…messages to young people about supposed ‘correct’ health responses offer insight into how people were expected to react to mass health events in fin-de-siècle Britain.” An example of a front page of The Girl’s Own Paper. A young woman is illustrated as reading to a young man lying ill in bed, emphasising women’s role asContinueContinue reading “Fin-de-Siècle Youth Magazines and their Construction of Gendered Responses to Sickness”
George Gissing, the Fin de Siècle, and Social Change: Understandings of the ‘Russian Influenza’
“Through realism, Gissing exhibits both sides of a cultural shift, with depictions of a man weathered down by metropolis living in New Grub Street (1891), and a yearning for a simpler time with The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1902).” Nineteenth-century Grub Street, as depicted in Robert Chambers Book of Days (1864), Wikimedia. This isContinueContinue reading “George Gissing, the Fin de Siècle, and Social Change: Understandings of the ‘Russian Influenza’”
Infection Within the Ranks: Examining the Way Conspiracies Complicate Public Responses to Pandemics, as Seen in the ‘Russian Flu’ Pandemic (1889-1895)
“As the epidemic developed, theories can be found which suggest that influenza was not an individual infection, but in fact simply an ‘influence’, an ‘electrical state of atmosphere’ with the ability to ‘exercise influence’ on the nervous system.” ‘A Cure for Influenza’ (1891). Cartoon satirising erroneous cures suggested during the 1889 influenza pandemic. Wellcome Collection/Wikimedia.ContinueContinue reading “Infection Within the Ranks: Examining the Way Conspiracies Complicate Public Responses to Pandemics, as Seen in the ‘Russian Flu’ Pandemic (1889-1895)”
Media Technology and Parasite Control: Japan-China Cooperation Under the Name of Family Planning in the 1980s
“…parasite control was less obviously connected to family planning yet it was integral to Japan’s international cooperation efforts in the field.” Topographical map of East Asia. Wikimedia Commons. In the early 1980s, China and Japan began cooperating in family planning through both governmental and nongovernmental channels. This was during China’s so-called ‘one-child policy’, so theContinueContinue reading “Media Technology and Parasite Control: Japan-China Cooperation Under the Name of Family Planning in the 1980s”
COVID-19 Experiences Alchemized Through Arts: A Case Study on Script Writing and Filmmaking with High School Students
“…the narratives evolved from personal anecdotes into complex stories enriched with interpersonal tension.” Making a timeline of the pandemic involved remembering the COVID-19 timeline and adding three personal events and two events that happened in the media. The main idea of this exercise was to remember personal events that can become a story but alsoContinueContinue reading “COVID-19 Experiences Alchemized Through Arts: A Case Study on Script Writing and Filmmaking with High School Students”
The Public Reception to TV Drama as a COVID-19 Information Source
“Film and TV can offer nuanced perspectives on complex issues and emotions that are often hard to grasp through traditional information channels”. Intensive care hospital fighting Covid-19 in Pesaro, Italy. Photo by Alberto Giuliani, Wikimedia Commons. March 19, 2020. As the most recent pandemic in history, COVID-19 had the unique position of being documented byContinueContinue reading “The Public Reception to TV Drama as a COVID-19 Information Source”
Disparaging Doctors and Mocking Masks: Medical and Media Relations during the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic in Southern California
Open air barber shop during influenza epidemic. Reference: University of California, Berkeley, California, Wikimedia Commons. At the Media and Epidemics: Technologies of Science Communication and Public Health, 20th-21st Centuries Conference, held at the University of Bucharest in May 2024, panellist contributions revealed the prominent position of newspapers in promulgating medical truths or untruths, of shapingContinueContinue reading “Disparaging Doctors and Mocking Masks: Medical and Media Relations during the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic in Southern California”
In Sickness and in Health: How the UK Media Urges Britain to Stick by Ailing NHS and Medical Staff
Photo by Nicolas J Leclercq on Unsplash. Two things struck me when researching media reporting on the medical profession in the UK: the number of issues in the National Health Service (NHS) and the fact that these issues have gone untreated for so long. I analysed articles from 2000 to 2024, and the problems inContinueContinue reading “In Sickness and in Health: How the UK Media Urges Britain to Stick by Ailing NHS and Medical Staff”
Media and Epidemics (MEDEP) 