This paper compares the coverage of the H1N1 and Covid-19 pandemics in ten prominent US daily newspapers. We selected articles that reference disease-specific keywords, published in the period between the declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization and the first peak in laboratory- confirmed cases in the USA (20550 articles on Covid-19 and 1705 articles on H1N1). We analyzed the dataset via topic models and semantic networks, which, in a semiotic approach, are understood as iconic models. As the Covid-19 virus produced the first global pandemic in the age of social media, this comparative analysis illustrates how the news media changed the mediasphere in general. During the H1N1 pandemic (2009-2010), newly emerging social media were not mainstream, having a limited impact compared to 2020 at the outbreak of Covid-19. By 2020, social media have definingly changed the mediasphere. Given their affordance for the virulent transmission of media products, the rise of social media stirred the relativization of knowledge and mistrust towards traditional authority and legacy media. Paradoxically, this both democratizes public debate and opens opportunities for misinformation. In this context, the Covid-19 pandemic has been accompanied by a global infodemic, with adverse impact on global health. While the two pandemics are very different, comparing media representations in their early stages, when the viral spread was unpredictable, offers an insight into how the emergence of social media impacted traditional newspapers’ approach to events of global concern. The analysis reveals that ideological commitments are expressed through the same correlation of topics in both corpora but that, overall, the discourses have different structures. We argue that the remarkable stability of ideological discourses displays what McLuhan termed Narcissus narcosis, namely the numbness experienced socially during media changes.

The Lithuanian Ministry of Education adopted the sexual education and preparation for family life policy in 2016. Policy formulation stage became the centre of the conflict between secular reproductive health and sex education activists and religious civil society organizations as well as Lithuanian Catholic Church which exerts its informal political power and utilizes institutional opportunity structures in various stages of policy-making. These groups clashed not only in the chambers of the Lithuanian Parliament, but also in the media. Competing discourses were created and maintained in various public spaces. Non-governmental human rights organizations have tried to counter the discourse of oppositional conservative and religious political actors and actively participated in policy formulation, but these attempts did not prevent the Ministry of Education from adopting a family and abstinence-oriented sex education which favours religious values. This paper seeks to understand religious influence in sexual education policy formation in Lithuania. I utilize public media reports and anonymous in-depth interviews with various relevant actors involved. This case study also enriches theoretical literature on informal institutions and institutional opportunity structures in relation to religious actors influence in morality policy-making.

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