Khushboo Sahrawat

Digital Cultures and New Media
Assignment: Reflection Paper

Question attempted: Write a reflection article choosing ONE perspective based on either humanvalues, moral impact or literary representation of Covid-19 in digital platforms such as social media, news media, web-series or blogs. You may like to use perspectives that you have observed during the lockdown on digital platforms.

Covid-19: Time and Digital Media in Perspective

One of the biggest tragedies of the 21st century is the COVID-19 situation which has made a profound impact on living beings. With the start of this year, the reaction and inaction to contamination of virus alarmed the public health situation around the smallest corners of the globe. Later on 11th March, 2020, the World Health Organisation declared it as a pandemic. (WHO Timeline) The pandemic, as the meaning of the word itself suggests, has left a large number of nations to control the spread of disease. And with the increased worrisome, severe restrictions were imposed across countries to get hold of the communicable disease outbreak. Implementing social distancing, hand hygiene, wearing masks, and physical isolation became primary measures to adapt to the quarantined world. And the masked faces and confinement to a certain place became a ‘normal’ life. However, to some extent, human lives got stuck to the screen in front of them. Digital platforms became a space bridging the communication gap between the social species. Ultimately, albeit people exist within the robust network of digital mediums, there has been the disappearance of time that gave rise to sluggish life which resulted in quarantine or pandemic narratives on social media, news media, and blogs. The standstill lifestyle has put time in perspective when interacting on digital mediums. Time here pertains to the absence of the mechanical or clock hour time. Thus, the high uncertainty in the coronavirus epidemic has led to examining a correlation between time and digital platforms.

Each day passing by has allowed an individual to ponder upon the balance one aims to maintain between professional and personal life. A student, employee in a firm, a professional and un-professional worker – all try to perform a different set of operations and tasks every day with enlisted productivity, effectiveness and time in their mind. A global newspaper, Insider, suggests that setting boundaries between work and personal time is important for physical and mental health during the coronavirus pandemic. (Michelson, 2020) Furthermore, if we look at Virginia Woolf’s celebrated and remarkable modernist text Mrs Dalloway, it explores the complexities of the human interactions by its protagonist’s monologue in a span of a single day. With passing each moment, the time is ‘dissolved in the air’ and confined to memory. Nowadays, a big crisis like coronavirus pandemic has put the humankind in a stream of consciousness, it is weaving narratives on digital platform in a technique alluding to interior monologue with words at the pre-speech level. (Encyclopaedia Britannica) There is a natural flow of our thought process and action put in a realistic manner. For instance, Muskingum University is one of the universities around the world who documented the narratives of students and professors in a book published online. It is titled The Quarantine Diaries: The Muskie View on COVID-19 and its preface mention that the stories published depict the experience of people during the time of fear and uncertainty as the world paused and COVID-19 took over. (The Quarantine Diaries)

Events as a Marker of Time

The narratives that emerged on digital platform during the pandemic have put the mechanical clock time in perspective of subjectivity. Previously, the Industrial Revolution or the age of exploration completely changed the way people would measure time, understand time, feel and talk about time, and opened ways to think about their work and time. (Thompson, 2016) I opine that from the beginning of this pandemic, it changed the standard division of time (weeks, months and years), instead it has become easier to perceive time in terms of events instead of clock times. There have been several global events that took place during the pandemic, such as massive protests on #blacklivesmatter, border conflict among nations, which are seen as events during pandemic phase instead of remembering their particular date of the month. The clock hour or mechanical time has become a subjective entity in the pandemic; just as Salvador Dali’s painting ‘Persistence of Memory’ brings attention to three distorted clocks symbolising “the past, present and future, which are all subjective and open to interpretation,” (Dali Paintings)

In addition to that, The New Yorker states that “over time, the impact of the novel coronavirus may be so sweeping that it alters human rituals and behaviours that have evolved over millennia”. (Wright, 2020) Evidently, the narratives compiled in the book The Quarantine Diaries: The Muskie View on COVID-19 are the marker of an ever needed routine. Someone writes, “routine and obligations are losing their gratuitous holds for every second they’re ignored”, and another person says, “I need routine. Structure. It’s vital. Maybe I’m trying to keep that routine in my runs.” (The Quarantine Diaries) Similarly, The New York Times’s deliberation of the quarantine diaries shows how “around the world, the history of our present moment is taking shape in journal entries and drawings, the story of an anxious, claustrophobic world on pause.” (Nierenberg, 2020) It has narratives put by children and adults on online medium (blogs, website, social media) in the form of paintings, illustrations, and hand-written notes. Another such narrative is A Day in the Life: Quarantine Edition by Rachel, a full-time student at UNCChapel Hill, now working from home, she writes “life doesn’t move as fast as it did on campus” and “I am trying my best to enjoy the slower pace”. (A Day in the Life: Quarantine Edition, 2020) Isn’t every day in life is divided into sections or events but not clock hours?

The Digital Media: Saviour in the Times of Coronavirus

Lastly, it is essential to propound the role of digital media in the times of coronavirus pandemic. Today, the social media and online-messengers on digital devices have become our only communication medium, online journalism is the most reliable form to get news and information, binge-watching web-series became a way to spend time with family, and visible rise in online courses and readership of blogs took place as well. The challenging coronavirus situation has created opportunities, as well. Although the lockdown felt like a lifetime, many digital innovations are changing our pandemic memories. It is asserted that people might not discuss the pandemic once it ends, yet the internet and digital mediums are to be credited for the collective historical memory. (Betuel, 2020) Also, as discussed earlier, it’s a challenge to be conscious of the transition from professional to personal life and the practice of ‘work from home’ is an example of how does one manage his/her time. The digital mediums allowed professional conversations on work-centric applications, and various apps were redesigned, especially for work from home situations to help boost productivity. Microsoft News’s lists working from home stories from quarantine couples, one of which is a tweet: “To maintain normalcy, my husband who usually calls me from work to check in just called me in my home office from his home office. We live in the same home. #Workingfromhome.” (Microsoft Corporation) There is an attempt by people across the world trying to maintain their past routine, yet emerging within the unescapable reality of pandemic. The engagement of digital audience increased massively on social media, blogs and news sites with the rise of coronavirus infected cases. A US-based study has interesting findings on global traffic and coverage data; it shows “there were more than 500 million daily page views from Google Search from March 16 to 19” (Chartbeat) when the cases were increasing rapidly. Indeed, humankind with sublime generosity, lethargic yet panache, working tinkers, and everything in between, the internet and digital mediums stand to be the most powerful assistant as our right-hand man.

To conclude, if compared to the Spanish flu pandemic which took place 100 years before, the present times certainly reflect how digitisation has bridged the gap of communication and acts as
a milieu to deal with the crisis more effectively. However, the curtailment of freedom can never be replaced with technology because it’s essential to the core human values. Ironically, if the medium was as successful as it claimed to be then there wouldn’t have been a surge of depression and anxiety cases amongst people. While all the corporates and public offices have resorted to
operate through virtual platforms, one can conspicuously see that there hasn’t been any significant growth in the performance compared to the last quarter. The new way of life won’t necessarily be better than the latter. Yet, it is because of the digitisation the economies are still able to function instead of heading towards straight collapse and people are able to work. Without it, the world wouldn’t have been a better place as it is today. The Covid-19 pandemic has given a space foe humankind to introspect on their way of living which is highly influenced by the digital media. And seeing the ever-increasing engagement of people on social media, blogs, and news sites, not just the communication is made easier, but there is a collective narrative emerging where the clock time is disappearing.

Work Cited

• “A Day in the Life: Quarantine Edition – The Writing and Learning Center.” The Writing Centre, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 17 June 2020, writingcenter.unc.edu/2020/04/dayin-the-life-quarantine/.
• Betuel, Emma. “How the Internet Will Change Our Coronavirus Memories.” Inverse, Inverse, 23 June 2020, www.inverse.com/mind-body/covid19-memory-history.
• Chartbeat. “How Is Coronavirus Impacting the News? Our Analysis of Global Traffic and Coverage Data.” Chartbeat Blog, 25 Mar. 2020, blog.chartbeat.com/2020/03/25/coronavirusdata-news-traffic-impact-analysis/.
• Dali Paintings. (n.d.). “Persistence of Memory, 1931 by Salvador Dali.” 10 Secrets of “The Persistence of Memory” by Salvador Dali, www.dalipaintings.com/persistence-of-memory.jsp.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Stream of Consciousness.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 28 Feb. 2020, www.britannica.com/art/stream-of-consciousness.
• Michelson, Andrea. “People with a Poor Work-Life Balance Are Twice as Likely to Fall Ill, Research Finds. Here’s How to Set Clear Boundaries.” Insider, Insider, 16 July 2020, www.insider.com/how-to-create-work-life-balance-thats-good-for-health-2020-7.
• Microsoft Corporation. (n.d.). 9 Hilarious Working from Home Stories from Quarantined Couples, www.msn.com/en-za/lifestyle/family-and-relationships/9-hilarious-working-fromhome-stories-from-quarantined-couples/ar-BB12EZ8O.
• Nierenberg, Amelia. “The Quarantine Diaries.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 30 Mar. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/style/coronavirus-diaries-social-history.html.
• “The Quarantine Diaries, The Muskie View on COVID-19”. Muskie Press, Muskingum University, 2020, https://www.muskingum.edu/sites/default/files/media/English/QuarantineDiaries.pdf
• Thompson, Derek. “A Brief Economic History of Time.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 21 Dec. 2016, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/12/a-brief-economic-history-of-time/510566/.
• Wright, Robin. “Finding Connection and Resilience During the Coronavirus Pandemic.” The New Yorker, 12 Mar. 2020, www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/coping-camaraderie-andhuman-evolution-amid-the-coronavirus-crisis.
• WHO Timeline – COVID-19. (n.d.). Retrieved July 15, 2020, from https://www.who.int/newsroom/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline—covid-19