2020 Infodemic
“We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic”
Can the story of the pandemic be told in 366 headlines?
Ghebreyesus was referring to the danger of misinformation spreading faster than information. Whether reliable or not, news about the coronavirus in 2020 grew as exponentially as the virus itself. On January 1, the news was distant and isolated – a market shut down by the authorities in Wuhan, China. The virus moved geographically; there was a sense of approaching danger, but political leaders were quick to reassure. By March 11, WHO had declared the coronavirus a global pandemic.
The headlines became shocking – things that had seemed unthinkable only a few days earlier were fast becoming reality. To manage the multiplying reports from every region in the world, news outlets switched to live-blogging the news. The format is often used for a local disaster or a bad day on the stock market – but now served to report on a public health emergency that affected everyone, everywhere.
I started to collect headlines about the 2020 pandemic as a way of making sense of the infodemic. The project is both a memorial and an attempt to answer the question “How did we get here?”
2020 Infodemic is available as a limited-edition of 366 hand-numbered posters, printed with fluorescent inks on 216gsm art paper.
