Mediatised Contagion: Some Propositions on Pandemic Media

Abstract

This essay explores the ways in which notions of ‘expert’-driven authenticity are being interrogated in the post-COVID-19 media sphere. I argue that the intensification of pathogenic virality has instantiated a generative ‘contamination’ of scientific disciplines such as immunology and virology with the networked openness of digital image cultures. It is through this contamination that we are able to see media forms as central to viral matter and not merely as repositories of its causes and effects. It is in the actions of a growing community of networked media user-producers and amateur scientists that a new lexicon of authenticity and truth can be imagined for our post-pandemic world.