Open AccessOnline environmental news stories in India during the COVID-19 pandemic: Reporting the ‘crisis’ and ‘concerns’ of the natural ecosystem
Author(s) -
Ram Awtar Yadav
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of environmental media
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2632-2471
pISSN - 2632-2463
DOI - 10.1386/jem_00023_1
Subject(s) - newspaper , pandemic , covid-19 , news media , social media , political science , internet privacy , geography , business , advertising , law , medicine , disease , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , computer science
This article is a review of the online news reports about the ‘humanitarian crisis’ that surfaced in India as thousands of migrant workers struggled to return home during the nationwide lockdown triggered by COVID-19. With several newspaper editions unable to print and circulate amid lockdown, the online news portals and mobile news apps served as significant news dissemination platforms to the people. The article also attempts to understand how the online news portals reported the environmental issues in relation to the countrywide lockdown. On the one hand, the news stories traced the origin of COVID-19 with coronavirus transmitting to humans via other species like bats and pangolins; on the other, many reports drew people’s attention to the improvement in air quality with declining pollution levels due to the shutdown. Besides, a number of news reports surfaced that warned about the water crisis looming large in many water-stressed regions of India with the onset of summer as more water would be required for sanitization to keep the deadly virus at bay.