In fact, the bandwidth of our daily media hardly encourages carelessness. Pêle-mêle, morbidity, lethality, saturation, oxygen, pushing back the walls, shortage, delay, not seen coming, war, invalid tests, waves, outbreak, clusters… are some of the words that come to shape our conversations. Words that, to be fair, nonetheless create, precisely, fear.
Social psychology researcher Jocelyn Raude states this about a study being conducted right now: " There is a correlation among our fellow citizens," he says, "between the duration of exposure to the media and negative feelings such as worry, anger or anxiety. This is not a criticism, it is an observation."
It's all there. Perhaps for the first time in the history twitter data of information, the challenge to journalism has never been so considerable. Despite the fear, to say what it is, to question. Because the subject of the moment has singular properties and their reunion is even more so.
Covid19 is present at all times, threatening, exclusive, unknown. In addition to the lies or half-truths about masks or tests attributable to those in power, it is the subject of constantly contradictory discourses. A "sick" uncertainty looms. And as if all this were not enough, the question, as we know, is posed in terms of life and death on the scale of an apartment as well as on a planetary scale. This extreme instability combined with the risk to life therefore constitutes a kind of paroxysm.
In terms of information, the active principle of the pandemic event is not only a virus, but also and above all fear. The fear of dying. Nothing less. Therefore, any image, any news produced to inform, also acts on this fear. However, fear is a whole, which devastates. The same goes for information on Covid. We would search in vain for the plan, the sequence, the cliché that sums up the period. Everything is Covid, everything is likely to contribute to provoking fear. Whether we like it or not.