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"When health authorities quarantined guests aboard the Diamond Princess on February 5, 2020, the cruise ship abruptly shifted from a dream vacation vessel to a public health nightmare. Over the next three weeks, 712 passengers tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus. There were fourteen deaths, and the ship outbreak quickly became the largest cluster of cases outside of China. Guests shared updates on social media that became a key source of information for news outlets and helped set the tone for how media would cover the pandemic for the next several years. Unlike past pandemics, COVID-19 emerged in a digital world of instant communication, with citizen-produced content mingling with more traditional media. Capturing COVID makes sense of how this modern landscape shaped the public's knowledge and perceptions during the progression of the pandemic. Katherine A. Foss focuses on crucial media moments to illuminate how this digital era shaped kept people informed and connected, but also led to the politicization of the virus, rampant mis/disinformation, and stigmatizing messaging that contributed to public distrust and division"-- Provided by publisher.
About the author
Katherine A. Foss is the director of the School of Journalism and Strategic Media at Middle Tennessee State University. She is author of numerous books, including
Constructing the Outbreak: Epidemics in Media and Collective Memory, and her work has appeared in both scholarly and popular publications, including the
Journal of Communication Inquiry,
The Washington Post,
The Conversation, and
Smithsonian Magazine.
