Digital media and acquisition of intellectual immunity

The latest global health crisis has created a shake on the ideas level in the real and virtual worlds. Many of these eliminate what came before, leaving a new paradigm of life the inevitable result of crises, according to « Thomas Kuhn ».
Accordingly, man has been transformed from being satisfied by his natural existence to being aware of that existence itself, from a spectator to a doer. Perhaps the development of technology allowed him to do so more than ever. As much as transportation encouraged the epidemic to turn into a pandemic, the media tried hard to reduce the damage by facing time, involving the recipient himself in the effectiveness of the communication process. And if « Emil Cioran » considers “time awareness as a conspiracy against time”, it is this awareness that led man to take the “decisive decision”, the same concept related to the crisis in its Greek word.
Digital media, this great sphere whose scope has expanded both in time and space despite its digital format, has proven, in a side of it, the efficiency of the theory of “vaccination” known in the field of media. The accelerating flow of information and the accompanying doses of knowledge create a kind of familiarity toward what is published, after the shock stage, of course. By virtue of which, the reader´-or-viewer has acquired an immunity that is metaphorically called intellectual immunity.
Information has become the only antidote not only because it was the shelter during the self-isolation, but also because it made the person contribute to its investigation. So, he was convinced of it´-or-refuted it. In this regard, it is inevitable that the huge amount of information isn’t without the element of inconsistency. Any news that comes is subject to tracing it’s source, verifying and criticizing it by employing the five senses, and even the sixth sense if there is sufficient awareness. Of course, this is no longer the journalist’s duty alone to deal with the information, but rather a role related to its recipient, who resorts to this in order to avoid the uncertainty factors and the loss of confidence in an atmosphere of tension and anticipation that characterized the world.


From their side, digital media sites have extensions to various media and social networks, which has earned them a significant fan base and from different age groups. Also, we often find audio´-or-audio-visual supports from the event site, not to mention technologies that facilitate the arrival of news as soon as it is released, such as activating the follow-up button´-or-sharing with updating the information. Therefore, we find that the crisis, especially with social isolation (sanitary confinement), has encouraged --print-- and audio-visual media to promote their digital extensions´-or-to establish them in case of absence.
In this context, the electronic media theorists « Poulter » and « Grossen » didn’t forget to consider the renewal occured to media as a “treatment” of the foregoing, by making use of technology, just as the arts took from each other, and just as the Internet benefited from the television experiences, before that this second one returns to use it for its benefit.

However, as a result of this bifurcation that occurred, the remnants of the massive media and information momentum mutated, as did the virus completely, so, it became difficult to control information, especially in the era of crises and the succession of events, where it is necessary to speed up its delivery and verify its authenticity at the same time. It is also worth noting that inconsistency in content is inevitable in light of the rarity of data on the nature of a sudden crisis, so how about an epidemic about which information is scarce!
The field of science is also floundering between ways to reduce the epidemic, but it produced countless scientific papers that exceeded 200,000 last December, according to Dimensions Database, and in many cases and --dir--ectly from the source, the social media were a subject of interactions between doctors, about the validity of some research and expectations, which requires from the media to report with its developments, moment by moment.
As a result, the recipient decided to become an active party in dealing with media content, by closely questioning the events,´-or-even participating in the production of information, in terms of specialization, and contributing to awareness and sensitization to self-preservation,´-or-documenting shortcomings with video technology for example,´-or-denouncing undesirable social behaviors. All that, contribute to flattening the epidemic level and speeding up the problem solving, in order to achieve the desired echo.
From the human side, perhaps the most remarkable are the solidarity scenes between people in the midst of the crisis and also the subsidies of civil society, which became clear between the virtual world and reality in our homeland, Algeria.
It is an aspect of --dir--ect interaction provided by communication channels in a spicky and crucial period as a sudden inflection point that requires emergency measures. This is in addition to having the element of flexibility embodied in the --dir--ect interaction spaces between media and recipient, and techniques such as archiving that allows tracking the epidemiological situation evolution, as well as processing information in the long term in another words, contributing to confronting the crisis.
This is the social responsibility linked to media, enriched by electronic content with a double role that leads to discussions, criticism of content, comparison, to indicate a transparent civilized behavior in the benefit of a protective system for both mind and body.
In view of this, the situation is not without some transgressions such as the spread of fake news and the intellectual property rights violation,´-or-pretending possessing of a specific discovery, with the difficulty of verifying cross-border news, and from it an ethical problem arises. However, rumors often appear when information is absent, so it is necessary to refute them with argument and proof, which means moving the media machine and its digital applications again.
In a different context, these applications and media weren’t just an encouragement of individuality by searching for the desired information at the desired moment, nor were restricted to one group without another, given that they allowed discussions between generations, as they played even an educational role. They have mainly contributed to receiving academic lessons remotely from official sources and completing educational programmes, which means that the crisis has left a radical transformation that has made digital media a part of its management on more than one level.

Some might say that the media glut happened immediately after the outbreak of the epidemic is like a psychological war toward the viewer´-or-the reader, even if it isn’t intended to do so because the journalist aims to track the indicators of change and anticipate the situation while delivering the news in a timely manner.
It is true that assimilating the information is quick to penetrate the mind with overcoming barriers, and it is true that its discrepancy may lead to a lack of credibility, but in return it stimulates research, contemplation and questioning, not believing anything simply by getting over the confusion, to give the person a special kind of immunity.
In addition to that, under the shadow of the remarkable media clamor, spaces emerged to present the elite thoughts, drawing challenges and stakes to future. Some of them talked about the harbingers of the post-Corona era, and others took the initiative to try to refining concepts and rebuild others linked to human life following the rupture caused by “Covid-19” crisis.
The global elite analyzes in the midst of the crisis, from philosophers, sociologists, and others, to the phase of Corona and the post-Corona period, revealed the multimedia role in creating an effective resonance and influencing public opinion, either by investigating the changing social structures norms´-or-by tracing the shock consequences. This is after the media took a proactive action as soon as the epidemic emerged in the eastern hemisphere as a form of media-health assistance.
So, when we ask about the virtual coordinates of « intellectual immunity », an intellectual concern emerges about the causality and finality of human existence itself, its essence and being, with strengthening faith in science as we see the end with our own eyes.
Trauma makes the human entity either a model for the theory of “vaccination”´-or-a subject of the “injection” theory according to which we live an involuntary simulation of the strong scenes broadcasted by the media during a crisis, and it happens to produce reactions between turnout´-or-abstinence.
In the end, we can say that the world has come to the idea that illness is like death, according to the Stoic philosophers, a natural stage of human life that necessarily occurs, according to which coexistence with reality is a duty of self-immunity. But, what if the information was suddenly cut off in the midst of this whirlpool of constant expectation ? Isn t that the real crisis in today s world in the absence of that link ? Wasn t information for the man the antidote and the refuge? Isn t the media treatment, with its updates, the actual guide to the fateful decisions in times of crisis ?

Iman Kaci Moussa

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