CHRONICLES OF THE CONCEPTION OF THE PANDEMIC FROM THE OPTICS OF THE MEDIA & IT’S PSYCHO-SOCIAL GENESIS IN INDIA

“Whoever controls the media, controls the mind”. – Jim Morrison. 

The quote upholds a gripping reality that has become a ubiquitous episode with the inception of the pandemic in India. The unbroken environment of health emergency in the country has catered to the escalation of miscellaneous reverberations adding up to a procession of severe psychotropic challenges to an individual and the society. Drawing references from several contemporary articles, the one that grasps our curiosity is the piece that has been put in black and white by The American Psychological Association ensuing the Ebola explosion. The narrative presented by the United States of the epidemic was such that it inaugurated an infatuation of paranoia in the country. The epidemic was given the nickname of ‘fearbola’ by the media triggering certain feelings of anxiety. Individuals being engulfed by pain due to antecedent psychological conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, melancholia and dementia have manifested an embitterment due to horde of elements ranging from the various speculations ignited by the media Let us discuss things from a theoretical lens, the media dependency theory establishes the crave of the human mind to be bolstered with information and a catalogue of plausible facts. The media has been accorded a heroic role of serving the purpose and cater to their need to learn about the enlisted guidance emanated by organizations. 

SWITCHING THE BIFOCLE TOWARDS INDIA– The corona virus was pronounced as a condition of public health emergency by the World Health Organization on 30 January 2020. The virus made its advent in Kerala on 30 January 2020 alongside the mass media fostering hygienic mechanisms of hand washing and social distancing through advertisements and commercials. Corona was brought in to the open as a comprehensive worldwide pandemic on March11 2020 which served as a boiling point for the media to commence regular reports on the eruption of the virus, using it as an apprentice to allure human attention. This marshaled the public in to a state of chaos, producing the perfunctory procuring of hand sanitizers, face masks, disinfectants, regular need products. The icing on the cake was the news regarding the scantiness of Personal Protective Equipments (PPE) for the frontline workers. The hand-sanitizers along with the face masks were positioned under the Essential Commodities Act as a result of this particular coverage.

THE PROGRESSION OF EVENTS– The chain of events such as the Janata Curfew regulated on March 22 2020 further ignited various conjectures. The beating up of utensils from the household was conceived as a gesticulation to embrace the self-esteem of the people, wrestling against the evil, at 5;00pm, on the call of the Prime Minister. There were intimations in the media, criticizing the act and professing that our country should not be thundering claps at a time of undersupply of essential merchandises such as the PPE Kits and masks. India witnessed a 21 days lockdown period being launched from 25th March 2020 that ushered in the wave of popular swing #coronaviruslockdown or #stayhomeindia on social media platforms such as the Twitter and Facebook. People resorted to various domiciliary activities and found a sensation of quietude in employing their time with family. This materialized into a contented bargain for most of us. There were evidences of severe mayhem with the news abutting the Delhi’s Tablighi Jamaat Markaz (meeting) whereby some of the partakers had evacuated the space and many were contaminated with the virus due to being marooned inside the mosque for complete isolation. The meeting was further arraigned for breaching the protocols of the lockdown and for advertising the sentiments of “Corona Jihad”, “Corona Terrorism”. Many regarded   the coverage as a bigoted one. The situation obtained a jaundiced interpretation of the haywire state of affairs aroused out of the panic. The advent of the pandemic convoyed alongside the marvel of the New Normal, envisaging a dynamic and motivated characterization of the internet serving as a dictionary for information with reference to COVID. The populace has also been bombarded with severe falsification of information orienting it with postulations of ploy regarding the virus being fabricated in laboratories of a foreign country, to be casted-off as a biological weapon.  The dispersion of deception can also be corresponded to the religious conformists for making up prophecies such that praying would prevent the infestation of the virus. The quest for the termination of the line of misinformation was satiated with Dr. Mike Ryan, Executive Director of WHO Health Emergencies Program, bringing out in the open on a social media duct that ‘we need a vaccine against misinformation’, petitioning the investigators of the academic realm of social science to examine the content of the stumbling block.

THE POTRAYAL OF HEALTH PROPAGANDA–   The right marketing of health in times of such quandary can be embellished as a fundamental contributor in raising awareness about the global pandemic. The protectorate of a free media is an imperative at times of such a health cruncher, using it as an apparatus to model and observe both national and international feedbacks and rendering unclouded and explicable procedures of health concords to the public. It is the very media that has been entangled with the culpability to communicate the grievances of those faced with fatality to the concerned solons. There have been several measures fashioned as per Article 19 of the Indian Constitution for the states to regulate during the hard times of the pandemic. 

1. Disclosure of Information– The leadership must undertake the charge of broadcasting the information such as the statistical analysis of the deaths recorded, recovery rates, number of people infested, demographical mapping of the disease, governmental reports, responses recorded. The campaigns mapped out to uplift public awareness, the unwavering web pages, the social media handles must feature precise information pertaining to the virus and its responses. There shall be fidelity of lucidity and answerability in the creation of the governmental policies.
2.  Freedom to legislate– The state must give the public the necessary liberty to be exercised in terms of accessing information of an undeniable type from the public enterprises. The freedom of information to law must corroborate the proper enactment of these laws and also make preordained amendments for the existing ones.
3. Thrust upon an embargo for the use of repressive legislation- The government shall ensure conformance to the freedom of expression. The administration shall also adopt a clement outlook, refraining from exercising a criminal manner of prosecution in dealing with the primary hate speeches and misinformation pertaining to the virus. Any form of calculated propaganda shall be averted.
4. The authorities should form firm laws safeguarding the ethics of journalists, reporting on the COVID. There ought to be an unfettered and variegated ambiance created for the media to work its finger to the bone enforcing digital literacy application in the modules of the educational institutions.

THE COMMUNICATION CRUNCH, PANDEMIC & INDIA–The pandemic has been triumphant in bringing to play a lamentable constraint upon the world and the health emergency system with a chronic compulsion on the crisis communication. The notion of ‘crisis communication’ occupies a central role, operating as a complex system when given the geographical blueprint of a country like India. The population is a more holistic doctrine which needs to be compartmentalized while keeping in mind the manufacturing of policies of the crisis communication that would draw plans interconnecting every state and compartment of society highlighting the impoverished and the belittled ones. India cannot be ruled out as an exception to be infested by the wave of  fake news. These forms of news are widely disseminated on platforms such as Whatsapp, Tik Tok, at times escalating in to severe communal tensions, lynching and pessimistic portrayal of certain groups or individuals.

India was booming as a hotspot of various genres pertaining to the facilitation of fake news. One such noteworthy news was the characterization of Vitamin C acting as an antitoxin in withering away of the virus. This gave rise to the formation of videos in the form of fake news being circulated in the name of doctors. The intercourse of superstition and rigid beliefs have also participated in the production of several sham news such as the benefits procured by the consumption of cow’s urine or Gaumutra. During the onset of the month April, there were speculations again baked as a part of such pirated version of news, advocating the declaration of an emergency by the government with the army taking control over the situation. This compelled the Indian Army’s Additional Directorate General of Public Information (ADGPI) to state a clarification on these matters. 

The question that arises here is that- Do we need a proper machinery of functionalism to maneuver these structures of information? Does the content of the infodemic subscribe to the germination of severe fear psychosis?

The role of the media is to cultivate reports correlating to the pandemic excluding any forms of favoritism and underpin a motivated approach of self-regulation. The recital, calls for an altruistic and inferential outlook rather than embarking on the hyperbole.

REFERENCES

1.COVID-19 Pandemic in India ,through a psychosocial lens– https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40847-020-00136-8

2. Impact of Mass Media on the quality of life –https://ijshr.com/IJSHR_Vol.5_Issue.3_July2020/IJSHR0039.pd
3. 3. Assessing corona virus fear in  Indian population-. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7255701/
4. Role of COVID as a catalyst – https://www.amity.edu/gwalior/jccc/pdf/dec_28.pdf
5. 5. Misinformation and the corona virus Article 19 – https://www.article19.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Coronavirus-briefing.pdf
6. India and Crisis Communication – https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/covid-19-india-and-crisis-communication-64102/

7.How fake news is complicating India’s war against Covid – https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/how-fake-news-complicating-india-war-against-covid19-66052/

Alokananda Nag

Intern, AGA

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author in her personal capacity.