The book evaluates unique civic challenges, responsibilities, and opportunities for media worldwide, exploring pandemic social norms that media promote or discourage, and how media serve as instruments of social control and resistance, or of cooperation and representation. These chapters raise significant questions about the roles mainstream or citizen journalists or netizens play or ought to play, enlightening audiences successfully about scientific information on COVID-19 in a pandemic that magnifies social inequality and unequal access to health care, challenging popular beliefs about health and disease prevention and the role of government while the entire world pays close attention.
This book will be of interest to students and faculty of communication studies and journalism, departments of public health, sociology, and social marketing.
John C. Pollock is Professor of Health and Human Rights Communication at the Departments of Communication Studies and Public Health, The College of New Jersey.
Douglas A. Vakoch is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Clinical Psychology, California Institute of Integral Studies.