The Sociology Colloquium is coming up next week! Undergrads are encouraged to attend!

"Getting Over COVID-19 or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Pandemic"

Dr. Timothy Recube, Smith College

November 12, 2025

2:00pm - 3:30pm

McHugh Hall, Room 302

The mass media is often accused of enflaming public concern over relatively trivial dangers, creating so-called “moral panics” that direct attention towards largely insignificant problems or fairly harmless yet heavily stigmatized groups. Less frequently discussed is the media’s tendency to tamp down public concerns over serious issues that do pose significant threats to the community. Taking the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study, this presentation will put forth a theory of “getting over:” a theory of how societies lose interest in matters that used to seem dangerous, pressing, or otherwise problematic, without having ever fixed or fully attended to them. It will focus on the media’s role in this process by examining both mainstream news coverage of the pandemic and alternative media, ultimately showing how the public was convinced to get over COVID-19 despite the significant threat it still posed.

 

For more information, contact: UConn Sociology Department at sociology@uconn.edu