NEWS MEDIA AND POLITICAL AGENDA DURING THE COVID 19 PANDEMIC
NEWS MEDIA AND POLITICAL AGENDA DURING THE COVID 19 PANDEMIC

Summary/Abstract: The year 2020 marked the largest human pandemic in the world since the first century. Covid19 crossed the borders of China and found habitat in the whole world, paralyzing the most powerful countries of the globe, causing hundreds of thousands of victims, postponing thousands of businesses, cancelling millions of flights, keeping enclosed at home millions of people and giving the Nature the freedom to breathe, like never before. The aim of this paper is to explore how the news media and political agendas were shaped during this unprecedented crisis. Did the news media agenda reflect the overall worries of the citizens about the sources of this pandemic? Did it offer a larger view of the reality, of the ramifications and of the solutions to the locked down citizens? Does it have an impact to the political agendas? The overall findings of this research showed us that during the Covid lockdown, the news media agenda was full of information about the pandemic situation and all its economic, political and social consequences but it was also full of information about the welfares of this situation to the Nature. The visual, print and online news media offered to the public not only statistics and emotional videos from hospitals but it also offered extraordinary pictures of the Earth in pause and pictures of the Nature in peace. The news media discourse put the spotlight on the urgent need to stop the human violence towards the Nature. The political discourse shifted from elections to the pandemic situation. Parliamentary, local and presidential elections are postponed in several countries.

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