School of Media Studies

How have digital media technologies governed, regulated, explained, and addressed the global Covid-19 pandemic? The imperative to avoid gathering in person over the past year has led to a massive turn to online environments, accelerating existing movements toward virtual life as well as spawning new forms of sociality. Whether we are taken aback by these changes or have been anticipating them for years, our fundamental ways of being and thinking are being altered, perhaps permanently. As we try to stop the spread of the virus while also trying to make sense of it in increasingly mediated spaces, the pandemic and its mediations have become synonymous with one another. Hence the term “pandemic media,” by which we mean: (a) media addressing the pandemic; (b) media produced as a result of the pandemic; (c) media shaping attitudes to the pandemic; (d) new metaphors, languages and protocols to take stock of an uncertain reality; and (e) memes and other forms of viral communication.    

As the virus has migrated, morphed, and mutated, a “culture of contagion” has come face to face with a “culture of uncertainty.” Infrastructural breakdown has haunted domains of inequity (congregate spaces such as nursing homes, prisons, migrant detention centers) and categories of neglect (low income employees doing society’s essential work, poorer countries as opposed to more affluent ones). Artists and media makers find themselves unable to address significant areas of inquiry. At the same time, creative interventions by thinkers and designers are pushing the boundaries of the possible.  

This event develops the critical lens of ‘pandemic media’ in order to make sense of some of these developments. It provides an inventory of new and emergent practices across diverse, even disparate realms of thought and action. Its aim is to elicit a lively community conversation regarding the infrastructures that have both sustained and constrained us during this pandemic.

Presentation Topics:
• Pandemic Media and the Hyperobject — Rachel Pincus
• Pandemic Media: Designing Safety — Nick Travaglini

• Pandemic Media’s Fragile Landscapes — Isabel Munson
• Pandemic: A Media Maker’s Perspective – Guillermina Zabala Suarez  

Moderated by: Sumita S. Chakravarty

Presented by the School of Media Studies at the Schools of Public Engagement. Organized by the M2Lab Initiative.