Rethinking Biopolitics and Governance in India during the Covid-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 001955612110457
Author(s):  
Avilasha Ghosh

The article critically examines the different strategies through which the Union government of India is battling against the novel coronavirus outbreak. In particular, the article examines the socio-economic implications of India’s nation-wide lockdown (25 March 2020–31 May 2020), and how one can conceptualise the same from a biopolitical framework. The article heavily draws from the works of influential thinkers such as Michel Foucault (1977, 2003, 2007), Giorgio Agamben (1998), Achille Mbembe (2019) and Partha Chatterjee (2006), to analyse the Indian state’s responses to Covid-19. The data deployed in this article is largely gathered from the author’s observations of the lockdown, and secondary sources such as newspaper articles, reports published by international and national organisations, academic journals, and social media websites. The main objectives of this article were to provide a critical reading of India’s ‘lockdown’ approach and ‘necropolitical governmentality,’ and understand how implementing the same has adversely impacted and reconfigured the social and the quotidian life of citizens.

2022 ◽  
pp. 61-82
Author(s):  
Petek Tosun

This chapter explores the social media marketing communication of brands in the first days of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak within the theoretical framework provided by signaling theory. The social media content of six Turkish brands was examined by content analysis. The findings have shown that brands shared posts in four themes: brand promotion, brand's COVID-19 messages, product promotion, and special day posts. Brands integrated the COVID-19 agenda in their social media communication in two ways. First, they designed and shared posts that focused solely on the pandemic. These COVID-19-related posts constituted a separate category that did not include any direct relevance to the brands' promotion activities. Second, they added COVID-19-related points in their social media posts. This study provides valuable findings for marketing practitioners and academicians regarding social media communication in a global health crisis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (SPL1) ◽  
pp. 462-468
Author(s):  
Latika kothari ◽  
Sanskruti Wadatkar ◽  
Roshni Taori ◽  
Pavan Bajaj ◽  
Diksha Agrawal

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a communicable infection caused by the novel coronavirus resulting in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV). It was recognized to be a health crisis for the general population of international concern on 30th January 2020 and conceded as a pandemic on 11th March 2020. India is taking various measures to fight this invisible enemy by adopting different strategies and policies. To stop the COVID-19 from spreading, the Home Affairs Ministry and the health ministry, of India, has issued the nCoV 19 guidelines on travel. Screening for COVID-19 by asking questions about any symptoms, recent travel history, and exposure. India has been trying to get testing kits available. The government of India has enforced various laws like the social distancing, Janata curfew, strict lockdowns, screening door to door to control the spread of novel coronavirus. In this pandemic, innovative medical treatments are being explored, and a proper vaccine is being hunted to deal with the situation. Infection control measures are necessary to prevent the virus from further spreading and to help control the current situation. Thus, this review illustrates and explains the criteria provided by the government of India to the awareness of the public to prevent the spread of COVID-19.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 67-75
Author(s):  
Muhammad Abdullahi Maigari ◽  
Uthman Abdullahi Abdul-Qadir

This paper examines the abduction of the schoolgirls in Chibok Local Government Area of Borno State, Nigeria in 2014. The paper examined how the abduction of the schoolgirls generated responses and support for the rescue of the abducted girls from people and organization from different parts of the globe. The Islamists terrorist organization operating in Borno State has attracted the attention of the world since 2009 when they started attacking government establishments and security installations northeast which later escalated to major cities in Northern Nigeria. Methodologically, the paper utilized secondary sources of data to analyze the phenomenon studied. The paper revealed that the development and innovations in information and communication technology which dismantled traditional and colonial boundaries enabled people to express support, solidarity and assist victims of conflict who resides millions of Kilometers away. This shows that Internet-based communications technology has reduced the distance of time and space that characterised traditional mass media. The campaign for the release of the schoolgirls on the social media platforms particularly Twitter and Facebook has tremendously contributed to the release of some of them. Furthermore, the girls freed from abduction have received proper attention: education and reintegration programmes which enable them to start post-abduction life. In this regard, social media has become a tool for supporting the government in moments of security challenges which the Bring Back Our Girls campaign attracted foreign and domestic assistance to Nigeria in the search of the abducted girls and the fight against the Islamist insurgents.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. e0260399
Author(s):  
Perla Werner ◽  
Aviad Tur-Sinai

Efforts to control the spread of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic include drastic measures such as isolation, social distancing, and lockdown. These restrictions are accompanied by serious adverse consequences such as forgoing of healthcare. The study aimed to assess the prevalence and correlates of forgone care for a variety of healthcare services during a two-month COVID-19 lockdown, using Andersen’s Behavioral Model of Healthcare Utilization. A cross-sectional study using computerized phone interviews was conducted with 302 Israeli Jewish participants aged 40 and above. Almost half of the participants (49%) reported a delay in seeking help for at least one needed healthcare service during the COVID-19 lockdown period. Among the predisposing factors, we found that participants aged 60+, being more religious, and reporting higher levels of COVID-19 fear were more likely to report forgone care than younger, less religious and less concerned participants. Among need factors, a statistically significant association was found with a reported diagnosis of diabetes, with participants with the disease having a considerably higher likelihood of forgone care. The findings stress the importance of developing interventions aimed at mitigating the phenomenon of forgoing care while creating nonconventional ways of consuming healthcare services. In the short term, healthcare services need to adapt to the social distancing and isolation measures required to stanch the epidemic. In the long term, policymakers should consider alternative ways of delivering healthcare services to the public regularly and during crisis without losing sight of their budgetary consequences. They must recognize the possibility of having to align medical staff to the changing demand for healthcare services under conditions of health uncertainty.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth F. Caldwell ◽  
Sarah Falcus

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the production of large numbers of books to educate children about the novel coronavirus and the measures to control its spread. The books have been produced by a wide variety of different individuals and organizations, from health professionals and educators to national public health organizations and the United Nations. This study provides a detailed analysis of 73 picturebooks about coronavirus/COVID-19 available in English and produced between March and June 2020. The analysis reveals that the books combine early scientific knowledge about the novel coronavirus with pre-existing connotations of germs to produce a specific, comprehensible cause for the social disruption produced by the pandemic. This portrayal is frequently used to mobilize children to be heroes and fight the virus through a number of behavioural measures, principally frequent hand washing and staying at home. The books also reveal adult anxieties about the nature of childhood and the uncertainty of the nature and timing of a post-pandemic future.


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Redyanto Noor

The reality of young readers'(Jakarta) receptions of the teenlit novel concerning the motives, purposes, and benefits of reading the teenlit novel explains the social-cultural function of teenlit novel. Teenlit novel as a means of entertainment is able to fulfill the social-cultural function, which is giving spiritually pleasure, to be able to accommodate the horizon-expectations of adolescent readers. Teenlit novel provides entertainment while teaching "something" to teenagers. Teenlit novel serves as a social media such as self-identification, actualization, and socialization. Teenlit novel directly or indirectly has function to develop personality: independent, confident, and more mature. However, in some ways there is a contradictory reality between the motives, goals, and benefits of reading teenlit novels among teenagers. The contradictory reality is the absence of a correlation between motives and goals with the benefit of reading teenlit novel. The motive of spare time is not correlated with the purpose of gaining knowledge. The purpose of acquiring knowledge is not correlated with the benefits of not feeling smarter. These facts indicate that there are important issues relating to information and values promoted by the novel teenlit and the value system prevailing in adolescent social life.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4(I)) ◽  
pp. 19-27
Author(s):  
Moein Mirani Ahangarkolaei ◽  
Eser Demir ◽  
Tolga Constantinou ◽  
Mostafa Toranji ◽  
Tadashi Adino ◽  
...  

Global pandemics are associated with substantial losses of human capital. The best strategy of policymakers in public health before a population-wide vaccination is to reduce the outbreak of the disease and finding ways to alleviate its negative consequences in society. Previous studies show that welfare programs have externalities in unintended areas and for unplanned outcomes including a wide range of health outcomes. In this paper, we show that payments under the Unemployment Insurance (UI) program have the potential to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. Applying a difference-in-difference technique on monthly data of all US counties from January 2020 to January 2021, we document that the social insurance under the umbrella of UI payments can reduce the transmission rate of Covid-19. The results show heterogeneity across subsample with the largest effects among blacks, poor, and low educated regions


Author(s):  
Isaac Mhute ◽  
Hugh Mangeya ◽  
Ernest Jakaza

The human species is in great danger of extinction due to the novel coronavirus that was first detected in China around December 2019. By March 2021, the world had witnessed over 116million cases, of which 36,223 are Zimbabwean. The disease that the coronavirus stimulates is quite fatal and has seen 2.57million lives succumbing to it, of which 1483 are Zimbabwean, by the same date. No cure has been discovered for it yet, though scientific researchers have already discovered several vaccines with varying efficacies. Employing a socio-pragmatic approach, the chapter explores the impact of fake covid-19 social media communications on efforts to minimize infections and fatalities in Zimbabwe, an already endangered country. It accomplishes this by qualitatively analyzing purposively sampled fake communications in circulation on social media as well as some of the utterances and behaviors people make in response to them. The chapter demonstrates the negative impact of the communications on international mitigating efforts and emphasizes the need for the government, media practitioners and social workers to always be watchful for such misleading communications and in every case to quickly counter their impact by availing correct information to the people.


2021 ◽  
Vol 257 ◽  
pp. 02034
Author(s):  
Qiu Feng ◽  
Ren Fuchen

Purpose The sudden outbreak of the novel coronavirus has caused varying degrees of damage to China and the world. In today’s era of information explosion, data and information are the driving force for decision-making. The improvement of medical treatment and public health systems is the most fundamental, but what a citizen needs is an intuitive and clear “seeing” the development of the epidemic. The correct trend, an accurate view and understanding of the epidemic requires us to use visual design methods to present it to the public, which is helpful to establish a correct understanding of the psychological construction of anti-epidemic at the social level.


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