Role of Digital Media During Covid-19 (Coronavirus) Pandemic in India (PART 2 OF 2)
Role of Digital Media During Covid-19 (Coronavirus) Pandemic in India - A Research
PART 2. CLICK HERE FOR PART 1.
Continuing from where we left off from Part 1...
PART 2. CLICK HERE FOR PART 1.
Continuing from where we left off from Part 1...
Here are some tweets from
the time when it happened (about the 21 days lockdown):
The second tweet showing
the situation at the night lockdown was announced is pretty much right. I
myself faced a similar situation when it had happened and my father and I went
out to buy the necessary household supplies, there were just a lot of people and
at that time social distancing had literally became a joke. Some people were
not even wearing masks and it was a mess. But then a sudden panic like this was
an easy guess to happen when a lockdown gets announced for 21 days in such a
huge nation and people do not really know how to react.
Here are some funny memes
and posts by people after they got to know about the 21 days lockdown, the
Internet for sure can get funny and creative even during such a bad time. I
mean some laugh is great right?
These memes surely are
funny but deep down many people knew that this lockdown won’t end just after 21
days. It was pretty obvious that the lockdown doesn’t actually stops
Coronavirus but slows the growth of it spreading. When people will stay at their
home, quarantined they are less likely to come in contact with other people and
particularly in people with masses. Flights got cancelled, railways and metro
also stopped with other public transport services.
As the lockdown started in India, there has
been rise in the usage of social media among youngsters, adults and even
elderly people. They need something to pass their quarantine time and social
media proved to be very beneficial regarding this. There was up to 87% increase
in the usage of social media during lockdown compared to the week before
lockdown and also up to 72% increase in normal internet usage besides social
media. That is really high, and people spent average 4 hours per day on
Facebook/Whatsapp. All this was found out by conducting surveys at various
regions in India. People also used more Instagram and Twitter compared to
pre-lockdown period. Other social media platforms also seen increment in the
usage. Youtube and Tik Tok was also something people already loved to spend
time on and it increased much more after the lockdown period started. People
got creative during the lockdown and made videos on Tik Tok and Youtube which
was enjoyed by a lot of people in India and is still going strong. Many famous
content creators also spread awareness by creating videos that made people
aware about the rise of coronavirus, benefits of quarantine, proper sanitation
and much more.
There have also been many
trends on the social media during the lockdown period where particularly on Instagram,
people have been doing numerous challenges, discussions through interactive
Q/A, posting their travel pictures captioning they are missing the time when
they used to go out, many posted videos of them singing and dancing, many
cooked amazing food and posted them, many posted and created funny memes about
Coronavirus and other topics trending. There was a trend of Dalgona coffee
recently during the lockdown period. Many people on social media sites posted
pictures of it. There have also been numerous memes on it.
But even before this, on
22nd March 2020 during Janta Curfew the entire nation participated
in an event which was addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He told us
citizens to applaud and give respect to the people giving their best services
even in this difficult COVID-19 Pandemic time by going out in the balcony or
near the window and bang steel plates, spoon, “ghanti bajana” or do clapping
etc. Basically make noises and applaud. The people did so, I participated as
well and it was a memorable moment. Hundreds of millions of people posted their
moment on social medias and everywhere there was something different to see,
many people got innovative with it and found amazing ways to applaud and make
noises. Some people of course made mistakes by going out of their homes, gathering
crowd and breaking the Janta Curfew rules.
On 5TH April
2020 another nationwide event happened when PM Modi told the citizens to switch
off their lights at their home at 9:00pm and light diyas, candles or torch/mobile
flash lights for 9 minutes. It was told to “end the darkness of COVID-19” It
was another amazing and memorable moment and was viral all over social media &
other platforms and people called it Chhoti Diwali. Many people burst crackers
and fireworks too which was really bad.
Now let’s talk about the
fake messages that was spread really fast about these two events, Whatsapp is
really a great way to forward messages from person to person and fake messages
indeed went viral too. Here are some screenshots. This really puts wrong
information into people’s mind who actually believe it.
Here’s one from Twitter
below:
I am pretty sure there
must be hundreds or maybe even thousands of DIFFERENT VIRAL messages like this
that was spread across digital media and not just about “Thali Bajana” or “Diya
Jalana” but about Coronavirus & Pandemic in general.
The first lockdown was
supposed to end on 14th April 2020 but many people knew this won’t
be the end as the number of cases were only rising as days were passing. By 13th
April number of Covid-19 cases in India passed 10,000 mark and there were
10,024 reported cases with 326 deaths. On 14th April at 10:00am
(morning), PM Narendra Modi addressed the nation again live and announced
Lockdown 2.0 till 3rd May 2020. But those regions which are not
Coronavirus Hotspots would get relief after 20th April 2020.
I would like to mention
about the Aarogya Setu app too which is a COVID-19 tracking app and everyone
was requested to download this app on their smartphones to keep track of
Coronavirus hotspots and prevent it from spreading further. It notifies when
someone is around a place or a person who was tested positive. It was promoted
everywhere on the Digital Media and outside it.
Some people are against
the usage of this app too, saying that it invades privacy and shouldn’t be made
mandatory but well it is.
source: financial express
By 1st May
2020 there were 35,365 cases in India with 1,152 deaths. Lockdown 3.0 was
announced on May 1 and that it is going to be extended till 18th May
2020 now after May 4.
At present when I am
writing this (May 13,2020). There are currently 74,280 Covid-19 cases in India
with 2,415 deaths. The rate at which Coronavirus is spreading now in India has
really increased.
Yesterday (May 12), PM
Modi addressed the nation again and made some announcements, the most important
of it was that he announced Rs. 20 lakh crore economic stimulus package which
is about 10% of India’s GDP. He also said that there will be another phase of
Lockdown (4.0) but it will have different rules on how it will work. It will be
announced in a few days.
This is pretty much it so
far about the COVID-19 Pandemic in India and according to many sources the
Pandemic will still last for a long time, we will have to start living with it
and not just shut down everything.
CONCLUSION-
As mentioned above, the
Coronavirus Pandemic will last for more months. There has been a lot of
controversy about it all over the world and in India itself so many things
happened from the first Covid-19 positive case to Lockdown 4.0. Indian
government is doing it’s best and the Digital Media along with people are doing
their job as well, spreading awareness, giving people proper statistics and how
Coronavirus is growing every day, what they can do to make themselves safe and
their families, living with it and even entertainment during this bad time. Students
attending classes online without needing to go to their school/college and
maintaining social distance and many people’s day-to-day job becoming online is
because of Digital Media’s power too. It helped us Indians a lot during this
Pandemic. It helped us connect to each other not only in India but all over the
world from our homes and see how humanity is going through this time together. People
found their hidden talents and gained new skills or improved them during this
Pandemic and showed them off to so many people on the digital platforms. It
also inspired other people to do something new and different. It is also true
that with information being spread about Covid-19 around social media sites,
many of them are fake news/messages or contains incorrect information to some
extent. People should check whether the message/news they are sharing is
correct or not by looking for sources as it can be really misleading to other
people. We still really don’t know when the vaccine to this virus will be out
to public in masses so for now we will have to take proper care of ourselves.
Wearing mask outside should be a must for everywhere and also maintaining
social distance. Slowly we are seeing public services being started again and
soon enough this all will be over and we will live a normal life again but we
should learn from this Global Pandemic and make ourselves much better so in
case if something like this comes again in the future, we are much stronger and
prepared on how to fight it and not let it harm us. Again, thanks to digital
media for playing a crucial role during this pandemic for us. Our life during
this pandemic would be much harder if technology wasn’t advanced enough to give
us Digital Media and basically the Internet or the smartphone and PC we use on
regular basis.
VALUABLE LINKS (HELPED WRITING THIS RESEARCH ARTICLE) -
Main source: Twitter
For finding Covid-19 cases & daily growth: Used
Google Search Data
THANK YOU.
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