Social Cnstructn of Pandemics

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

The Social Construction of Pandemics: Science, Policy, and Media This course examines the production of knowledge at the intersection of scientific research, policy making, and mass media. At the same time, it explores how knowledge about our world is inseparable from the way we live in it. Specifically, how we simultaneously produce knowledge about COVID-19 and experience it as the lived reality of our times. To explore this relationship between science, policy, media, and society we will questions about who produces scientific knowledge and how scientific authority is located. We will explore how scientific research informs policy makers, and how policy responds to societal pressures channeled through mass media. Finally, we will engage in critical analysis of current and past journalistic and social media practices, and how they affect our daily lives, our understanding of the world, of science, and of life in a pandemic. We start this journey in the past, looking at the history of pandemics, of media, and of the healthcare system of the United States. We then engage with different theoretical frameworks from the social sciences that will guide our analysis of the present, including medical anthropology, science and technology studies, public health, political economy, and media studies. We will use ethnographic and archival data, as well as scholarly sources to investigate the complexities of the COVID-19 pandemic and the information and disinformation that is in constant production and circulation. This research will lead the participants of this class to the formulation of their own critical analysis of knowledge in-the-making during a pandemic and the crafting of their own final project. Final projects can be written papers, short films, podcasts, or other creative form of expression previously discussed with the instructor.