Dealing with COVID-19: The Perils of Using Previous Crises as a Reference Point

An interview with Bram De Ridder

Episode 15 of the De Gruyter Brill on the Wire podcast, hosted by New Books Network, titled "Dealing with COVID-19: The Perils of Using Previous Crises as a Reference Point" was published on May 20, 2020 and runs 27 minutes.

May 20, 2020 ·27m · De Gruyter Brill on the Wire

Summary

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has received unprecedented media coverage in the past 3 months. A large part of this coverage includes comparisons of the ongoing crisis to some major crises of the past, including the SARS epidemic of 2002-2003. In a new study titled “When the Analogy Breaks: Historical References in Flemish News Media at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic” published in Brill’s Journal of Applied History, Dr. Bram De Ridder from KU Leuven, Belgium, analyzes how three Flemish media outlets covered the crisis recently and how their misplaced historical analogies could affect public perception, causing a problem in dealing with the current pandemic.

Episode Description