Capturing COVID

Media and the Pandemic in the Digital Era

Katherine A. Foss

• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781625348289, 9781625348296
• eBook ISBN: 9781685751005
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Public Health, Administration & Care
• Index: Social Sciences

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 coronavirus, with fourteen deaths, and the ship outbreak quickly became the largest cluster of cases outside of China. Guests began to routinely share quarantine updates on social media, ranging from the quality of the ship's food to their sense of imprisonment. These Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok?accounts became a key source of information for news outlets like the Associated Press, and they helped to set the tone for how the media would cover and frame the pandemic for the next several years.

Unlike past outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics, COVID-19 emerged in a 21st-century digital landscape of instant communication and abundant online platforms, with older models of news and entertainment media mingling with new types of citizen-produced content. In Capturing COVID, Katherine A. Foss?makes sense of how this contemporary media landscape shaped the public's knowledge and perceptions of the new pandemic. The book focuses on crucial media moments, including the initial reporting from Wuhan; news and social media content on the Diamond Princess quarantine; stories of inequality, stigma, and injustice; narratives of the vaccine rollout; and representations of pandemic life in popular culture. Drawing on press releases, interviews, websites, blogs, social media posts, and other publicly available materials, and guided by critical media analysis, Foss illuminates how this new digital era profoundly shaped the progression of the pandemic. This media landscape 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. Capturing COVID deftly helps make sense of the entire affair.

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents 
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Chapter One: The Unexpected Crisis in the Digital Era
• Chapter Two: Diffusion from Wuhan: From “Mystery Pneumonia” to Covid Pandemic
• Chapter Three: “Like Sitting Ducks”: The Cruise Ship Crisis
• Chapter Four: “Essential” or Sheltered in Place?: Media in Spring 2020
• Chapter Five: Not In It Together: Stigma, Injustice, and Disparity in the Pandemic
• Chapter Six: A Pivotal Moment: Media and the Covid Vaccines
• Chapter Seven: Depicting the “New Normal”: The Impact of Covid on and in Entertainment
• Chapter Eight: Life After Crisis: Preserving Memory and Experience
• Notes
• Index