Information Diffusion, Risk Communication, Environmental Degradation, and Neo-Liberalization: How the Covid-19 Global Pandemic Has Unfolded to Reveal Humanity’s Vulnerability to a Global Disaster in the Post-Industrial Age

Abstract

This article, written in March 2020, explores the two dimensions of the Covid-19 pandemic: the infodemic which has raged online, and the evolution of the pandemic itself. I explore the social and technological dynamics that that have been at play including group polarization, the ambiguity of harm, and risk communication. I also contend that the Covid-19 pandemic is a technological disaster, and using the disaster cycle framework, I outline that the pandemic has been essentially a result of economic, ideological, and geopolitical decisions made starting in at least the mid twentieth century. This is a slow-moving disaster that is an indicator and a product of climate change, urbanization, and globalization. As this was a novel phenomenon at time of writing, the information sources primarily consisted of academic pre-papers, news articles, and foundational disaster-theory papers.