From The Anthropology of Epidemics
1st Edition by Ann H. Kelly, Frédéric Keck, Christos Lynteris, (published just over a year ago!) -- the chapter by Carlo Caduff:
Today’s mass media fascination with the next pandemic is partly due to the fact that it operates as corroboration of the mass media’s own discursive problematic: the necessity of creating and maintaining a constant sense of newness. The function of mass media communication, according to Niklas Luhmann, is to simultaneously ‘generate and process irritation’. Invested in the production, circulation, and consumption of irritation, mass media communication stimulates ‘the constantly renewed willingness to be prepared for surprises’. The trope of the next pandemic, in this sense, is a fertile ground for the mass media and its discursive problematic.
No surprise that a reference to the great Niklas Luhmann kicks off the analysis.
Today’s mass media fascination with the next pandemic is partly due to the fact that it operates as corroboration of the mass media’s own discursive problematic: the necessity of creating and maintaining a constant sense of newness. The function of mass media communication, according to Niklas Luhmann, is to simultaneously ‘generate and process irritation’. Invested in the production, circulation, and consumption of irritation, mass media communication stimulates ‘the constantly renewed willingness to be prepared for surprises’. The trope of the next pandemic, in this sense, is a fertile ground for the mass media and its discursive problematic.
No surprise that a reference to the great Niklas Luhmann kicks off the analysis.
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