Manifestation of Panic in Mass Media: COVID-19 Case in Lithuania

  • Miglė Eleonora Černikovaitė
Keywords: panic manifestation, intimidation of public, manipulative power, mass media, covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

Mass media has a huge influence on masses. It shapes people’s mindset, attitudes, and often their actions in certain situations. Mass media has massive control over the mindset especially during the crises and emergencies. Mass media provides most important source of information in our society about: politics, economics, health care, entertainment, crime, and so on. Existing modern larger television broadcast networks  and news portal news components known from the global COVID-19 pandemic. The key research question- whether the use of mass media power was used just for the COVID-19 news spread or it was used to the  intimidation of public in order to increase the media ratings overall? This topic is very sensitive, and then various recommendations are made to the media: economic recessions, health care courses, political rankings, and so on. Having manipulative power, media channels, their editors and journalists, headlines, reports, videos that could easily raise fear and moral panic among all members. The purpose of the research is to analyze panic manifestation case of COVID-19 in Lithuanian and global mass media channels. Research method, used in the article The results of the study revealed that manifestation of panic was observed in all selected channels, but news of a global media organizations were more constructive and accurate and local media channels were  more focused on intimidation and to the amount of news.

References

Barker, M., Petley, J. (2013), Ill effects: the media violence debate (communication and society), Routledge, London and New York.

Cohen, S. (2011), Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers, Routledge, London and New York.

Critcher, C. (2003), Moral Panics and the Media, Open University Press.

Deibert, R. (2019), “The Road to Digital Unfreedom: Three Painful Truths About Social Media”, in Journal of Democracy, vol. 30, no. 1, Jan. 2019, pp. 25-39.

Depoux, A., Martin, S., Karafillakis, E., Preet, R., Wilder-Smith A., Larson, H. (2020), “The pandemic of social media panic travels faster than the COVID-19 outbreak”, retrieved at: https://www.researchgate.net.

Goode, E., Ben-Yehuda, N. (2009), Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance, Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, Oxford.

Gøtzsche, P. C. (2020), “The Coronavirus mass panic is not justified”, retrieved at: https://www.deadlymedicines.dk.

Hariharan, A., Alpers, G. W. (2017), “Detecting panic potential in social media tweets”, retrieved at: https://www.researchgate.net.

Jacobs, L., Meeusen, C. (2015), “The Role of Sensationalism, Tabloidisation and Diversity in News Coverage of Immigration and Attitudes: Public and Commercial Television News Compared”, retrieved at: https://ecpr.eu.

Juodytė, A. (2008) “Manipuliacinės įtraukimo į komunikaciją strategijos periodinėje spaudoje”, in Žurnalistikos tyrimai, 10, pp. 25-40. doi: 10.15388/zt/jr.2008.1.81.

Księga Komunikacji Kryzysowej. Podstawy zarządzania informacją w kryzysie. (2017), Rządowe Centrum Bezpieczeństwa, Varšuva.

Maslow, A. (2011), “Hierarchy of Needs: A Theory of Human Motivation”, www.all-about-psychology.com, January 16, 2011, p. 95.

McRobbie, A., Thornton, Sarah L. (2019), “Rethinking ‘moral panic’ for multi-mediated social worlds”, in The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 46, No. 4, pp. 559-574.

Mueller, M. (2019), “Challenging the Social Media Moral Panic”, retrieved at: https://www.cato.org.

Nicholas, S., OʼMalley, T. (2013), Moral Panics, Social Fears, and the Media: Historical Perspectives, Routledge, New York.

Strupiechowska, M. (2017), “Panika moralna jako pole starcia interesów publicznych”, retrieved at: http://cejsh.icm.edu.pl.

Suslavičius, A. (2006), Socialinė psichologija, Vilniaus universiteto leidykla, Vilnius.

Ulfkotte, U. (2003), Taip meluoja žurnalistai: mūšis dėl reitingų ir tiražų, Mintis, Vilnius.

Woo, H., Shim, E., Song, G., Cho, Y., Lee, K. (2015), “Public Trauma after the Sewol Ferry Disaster: The Role of Social Media in Understanding the Public Mood”, retrieved at: https://www.researchgate.net.

Zielińska, I. (2004), “Media, interes i panika moralna. Nowa kategoria socjologiczna i jej implikacje”, retrieved at: https://depot.ceon.pl.

Published
2022-06-13
How to Cite
Černikovaitė, M. E. (2022) “Manifestation of Panic in Mass Media: COVID-19 Case in Lithuania”, Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio. doi: 10.4396/202207MC.