Biological and Mediated Pandemics, Panic, and Pandemonium

Abstract

Plagues have a physical existence. They also have mediated existence. The two are only circumstantially related, for, as is the case of all media and mediation, biological and digital existence do not necessarily correlate accurately, and media are as often used as a lamp to project political and philosophical idealism, that is, propaganda, as they are to serve as a mirror that reflects the external world realistically. Objective journalism, news spin, and fake news, conflated in the collective mind of the populace, are tools in the class struggle to control the social, cultural and political narrative. Plagues have been and continue to be mediated in drama, oral storytelling, in books, printed and manuscript, on the radio, on TV and in films, and in social media while the populace rails against and shouts its rage at TV screens.