THE ROLE OF MEDIA IN FIGHTING THE SPREAD OF COVID-19

 By Lawrence Sunday Ogwang

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Uganda registered the first case of covid-19 in March 2020. Discuss the role played by media against the rapid spread of corona virus in Uganda.

According to Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (CHRDA) (2020), the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is an infectious disease caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2(SARS-12COV-2).The coronavirus was first detected in December 2019 in Wuhan-China. It has since spread to other countries across the globe, more than four million cases have been reported, resulting in more than three hundred thousand deaths. It is not all gloomy, as close to two million people have also recovered.

The virus is mostly spread between people during close contact, often via small droplets produced during coughing, sneezing, or talking. The virus can survive on the surface for up to 72 hours. Currently, there is no vaccine for COVID-19 while researchers are doing their best in discovering the vaccine.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on 30^th January 2020 and a pandemic on 11^th March 2020.

One of the prime measures to combat the spread of COVID-19 pandemic is for the population to stay aware of accurate and reliable information about its development around the world. This measure encompasses creating awareness and disseminating other preventive measures to the public through various media platforms and local means. With its devastating effects, the media both local and international has been and is still playing a great role in an attempt to curve the spread of the pandemic.

Media houses across the globe
have been doing their best in reporting on the coronavirus outbreak. The role of the media be it social, broadcast, or print is diverse and vast. This involves educating the people, informing the population about the pandemic and also disseminating measures on how to combat its spread.

1)    Creating Awareness:

This involves updating the population on an hourly, daily weekly, and monthly development of the coronavirus across the globe. The awareness campaign have been helping individuals to be aware of the situation within their communities, neighboring countries, and the world at large. When the population is conscious of the COVID-19 updates around the world, it will prevent them from walking into affected places without the knowledge or taking primary measures (CHRDA, 2020).

2) Fight against fake news and misinformation:

Social media has come with its advantages and disadvantages like any other development. The level of misinformation is at the peak as most people using the social media platforms where billions of people are connected has developed the culture of sharing fake news and misinformation in the face of this pandemic. Consequently, media practitioners through their various media platforms have been kicking back against most of this fake news and misinformation. Some even have sections dedicated against fake news on their social media handles. Live programs, talk shows, thousands of articles are being written everyday sensitizing the population on the COVID-19 pandemic prevention measures put in place by the World Health Organization.

CHRDA (2020) acknowledges the marvelous job by journalists and the entire media community within the national and international levels.

In the like manner, the world health organization has in several occasions warned against propagating fake news in relation to COVID-19. For example, many people recently took to the social media propagating fake news about the discovery of COVID-19 vaccine, racial discriminatory causes of the pandemic, etc. According to Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (2020), WHO Director-General Tederos Adhamom Ghebreyesus has stated in several press conferences “This is a time for science, not rumors. This is the time for solidarity, not stigma.

3) Analysis of the pandemic:

The media organs both traditional and social in the course of their duties, have been engaging specialists/doctors through interviews and live shows to create awareness on the symptoms, new discoveries relating to the virus, and how to limit the spread of the viral disease. With everyday alteration on the COVID-19 pandemic parameters, it is very essential for the general population to stay up to date. This is because recommendations on how to prevent its spread from the doctors/specialists/government and world health organization, change every day about the viral diseases. With this difficult task, it has been the role of journalists or media practitioners to constantly update the population on the recent trends.

4) Accountability and non-politicization of the coronavirus:

 The non-politicization involves journalists holding the government, politicians, health personnel, or officials and all other stakeholders into account about what they are passing across to the population. This is in a bid to make sure that the above-mentioned groups are not using the coronavirus outbreak for political gains or to promote partisan politics.

For example, journalists have questioned several presidents across the globe about some of their utterances on the coronavirus. Uganda media houses for instance have been putting the government to task to account for the money collected locally for covid 19 prevention but above all, the supplementary budget that was passed by legislatures in parliament. The 10 billion shillings that the august house pocketed, called in the attention and concern of many media houses which concerns saved some supplementary money from the sharp jaws of some legislators.

Enquiring from the government officials, health authorities and all other stakeholders on the development of the pandemic and their opinion and measures put in place, the possible effects and disseminating it to the population is a great contribution in fighting against the spread of COVID-19. These debates, interviews, or questioning politicians and all stakeholders on what they say have contributed to educating them on the need to change the mode of communication during the COVID-19 pandemic to suit the reality.

5) Inclusion of COVID-19 sensitization clauses in media platforms:

Media houses have been contributing their quota to educate, sensitize and inform the population about the coronavirus. It is in support to the efforts by the government and medical doctors that media has been actively fighting against the spread of covid 19 in Uganda.

Regrettably, Journalists across the world have fallen prey to the COVID-19. According to statistics from the office of the United Nations Secretariat, more than 50 journalists worldwide have died from the Coronavirus pandemic while executing their duties.

Fortunately, in Uganda, no death has been recorded yet but journalists in different media houses are calling on all to practice good hygiene measures, washing of hands frequently, practicing social distancing, and all other measures that will keep them safe from the virus.

However, it remains important to note that the public has been educate by print media, broadcast media, and social media including blogging about the development, spread and prevention of COVID-19. CHRDA’s president Barrister Agbor Nkongho is of the stand that the fight against the viral disease should be a communal fight and that everyone should be in the position to contribute its quota.

In your own opinion, which media effects theory do you think is more applicable or relevant towards the Uganda’s fight against COVID 19?

Media effects include theories that explain how the mass media influence the attitudes and perceptions of audience members and also how society affects media in different ways. The extent to which the two variables (media and society) affect each other depends on the type of theories.

In relation to COVID-19 prevention, according to my own opinion, media effect theory that is mostly applicable and relevant towards Uganda’s fight against the pandemic is Agenda setting theory among others. It falls under phase three of media effect theories (All powerful media rediscovered).  

According to Lazarsfeld et al, (1944), Agenda-setting theory was formally developed by Max McCombs and Donald Shaw in a study during the 1968 American presidential election. Agenda setting is a social science theory; it also attempts to make predictions. The theory suggests that media has a great influence to their audience by instilling what they should think instead of what they think. That is, if a news item is covered frequently and prominently, the audience will regard the issue as more important.

It further states that mass media determine the issues that concern the public rather than the public’s views. Under this theory, the issues that receive the most attention from media become the issues that the public discusses, debates, and demands action on. This means that the media is determining what issues and stories the public thinks about. Therefore, when the media fails to address a particular issue, it becomes marginalized in the minds of the public.

According to Iyengar (1990), Agenda setting occurs through a cognitive process known as "accessibility". Accessibility implies that the more frequently and prominently the news media cover an issue, the more instances of that issue become accessible in audience's memories. When respondents are asked what the most important problem facing the country is, they answer with the most accessible news issue in memory, which is typically the issue the news media focused on the most.

 The agenda-setting effect is not the result of receiving one or a few messages but is due to the aggregate impact of a very large number of messages, each of which a different content has but all of which deal with the same general issue (Dearing and Rogers, 1988).

 Mass media coverage in general and agenda setting in particular also has a powerful impact on what individuals think that other people are thinking, and hence they tend to allocate more importance to issues that have been extensively covered by mass media. This is also called schemata theory. It describes a pattern of thought or behavior that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them (Neumann, 1977).

Reasons to support this opinion

Agenda setting is one of the most relevant media effects theories in fighting against the spread of Covid-19 since under this theory, the issues that receive the most attention from media become the issues that the public discusses, debates, and demands action on. Effectively fighting Covid-19 would mean advocating for behaviour change. With agenda setting, when the media gives attention to the issues of Covid-19 the way it has been doing, it also becomes a public issue and thus, they take or demand action for it. Hence, agenda setting becomes one of the most relevant theories in the fight against the spread of Covid-19.

One of the assumptions of agenda setting states that media messages shapes public opinion because people depend so much on media messages, it is therefore most certain that with the media’s messages against the spread of Covid-19, the public opinion will change and ultimately, their perception and behaviour will eventually not remain the same. Hence, giving credibility to the fact that agenda setting as a media effect theory is most applicable in the fight against the spread of Covid-19.

Another reason is based on the assumption that media messages have direct, strong and immediate effect on its consumers. According to this theory, media messages have a speedy impact on consumers and this fast impact is seen in most cases on the behaviour change. When the media sets agenda for the public, the reaction is fast. For example, when Uganda received its first case of Covid-19, the ministry of Health through different media houses advocated that people should observe certain directives like washing and sanitizing hands. Within a short time, everybody had gotten accustomed to all these directives. This is shows the strength of agenda setting in fighting the pandemic.

Another reason as to why in my opinion agenda setting is most relevant in the fight against Corona virus is based on its assumption that media messages can easily penetrate through the defenses of people and influence them instantly. This has been observed in the way people in Uganda for instance have been instantly influenced by the media messages of wearing face mask as one of the preventive measures against the spread of the corona virus.

When Covid-19 was slowly taking root in Uganda, it became nearly every body’s business to either tune to the radio or television in order to get the latest update about the virus. Whatever the media says, is taken by the public as gospel truth. This is also grounded on the assumption that people always trust and depend on media messages as their source of information. So, by media setting agenda for the public about the prevention of the virus, people are likely to take it wholesomely to heart and either act on it or change their behaviour.

It is also unquestionably true that most people hold media messages with high esteem because of how powerful it is. If the media sets agenda for the public especially about corona virus, it is obviously true that people will take it to heart that if they heard it from somewhere else. This is also grounded on the assumption that media messages as more powerful above all other factors like education, culture that causes change immediately among people.

Criticisms

However, agenda setting has been criticized on the grounds that it does not consider the fact that not everybody has access to media messages because of one reason or the other and this means that in relation to the question, not all will get the message about the prevention of the deadly corona virus.

Above all, it does not consider the fact that people have choices on what to watch or listen to. Therefore, not everyone will get the message about the spread and the prevention of covid-19 since people will chose what they want to watch and listen to.

It is also important to note that agenda setting does not consider the fact that people have control over what influence them. With so many sources of information available today through a variety of media outlets, people have more control than ever over the messages that influence them. Many people now exercise selective exposure seeking out only the information that supports their worldview. The argument is that though the media is still very influential today, its influence is far more complex and nuanced than in the early days of mass communication.

Conclusion

Despite the fact that critics have cited areas of weakness in agenda setting theory, it is still important to note that in this wake of covid-19, through the same theory, the media has contributed a lot to people’s change of attitude and behaviour that is very key in the fight against corona virus. This leaves the fact that the theory is still relevant in the fight against the spread of the corona pandemic. 

References

Iyengar, S., 1990., "The accessibility bias in politics: Television news and public opinion". International Journal of Public Opinion Research. 2: 1–15.

Dearing, J; Rogers, E., 1988. "Agenda-setting research: Where has it been, where is it going?". Communication Yearbook. 11: 555–594.  

 Noelle-Neumann, E., 1977. "Turbulances in the climate of opinion:Methodological applications of the spiral of silence theory". Public Opinion Quarterly. 41 (2): 143–158

Lazarsfeld, P. F., Berelson, B., & Gaudet, H., 1944. The People’s Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce

Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa  Report (CHRDA) (2020)