Literature review on covid19

Literature review Health education and the surveillance role of the mass media To educate the general public about health issues, the media need to first monitor the environment and identify potential life-threatening health issues and provide adequate information that will enlighten the masses on the issues. Sharma and Gupta [9] say that health education is an essential aspect of public health and health promotion. They add that the goal of health education is to have positive influence on health behaviour of people through information and instruction. That is to say that media coverage is an essential strategy of health education. This is because, through media coverage, the general public will be informed and instructed on issues related to public health issues. The means also that the surveillance role of the mass media is essential in the study of media coverage of health issues. The surveillance role of the mass media requires that they monitor the society and provide information to members of the society on pending dangers. This function is an expression of the ‘watchdog role’ of the media. This is because when a dog watches over an area, it makes efforts to let people know each time there is a perceived danger. The dog barks and this typically attracts the attention of the public with a corresponding possibility for eliciting actions to avert the danger. Therefore, the surveillance role of the mass media means that they constantly scan the society, evaluate events and highlight areas that pose potential danger to the general wellness of the society. In this sense, the media have a duty to make sure that people are adequately warned of dangers. Donohue et al. [10] must have been referring to the surveillance function of the mass media when they submitted that knowledge is an essential condiment that people need to take informed decisions. This assertion makes a strong case for media workers to constantly monitor the society and provide relevant and sufficient information to members of the general public. The idea behind the surveillance function of the mass media is attributed to Lasswell [11]. In the views of Lasswell, the mass media typically plays three roles to the society. These are as follows: the surveillance of the environment, the correlation of the different components of society in responding to the environment and the passing societal heritage from generation to generation. When this assertion is explained within the perspective of COVID-19, it can be said that the mass media in Nigeria have a responsibility to examine the spread of COVID-19 and coordinate both government and the citizenry on how best to respond to the global health crisis. Based on the surveillance perspective, when the virus broke out in China and was fast spreading to other countries, Nigerian media needed to draw the attention of both the government and Nigerian people on the need to act proactively. For the government, the emphasis could have been on taking policy decisions that will avoid the spread of the virus into the country while also making adequate provision to contain it in case of an outbreak. For the citizenry, the focal point could have been educating them about the virus in areas like symptoms while also encouraging them to imbibe preventive health behaviour. Media performance of its surveillance role has been examined in literature. Gever and Coleman [12] did a study to determine how the media perform their surveillance function within the context of conflict. Their results showed that the conflict between farmers and herdsmen only appear in the media when it is happening. As soon as the conflict reduces, no media reports are made available, no warning sign and news about the conflict disappears in the media. Udeze and Chukwuma [13] carried out a study with the objective to determine public perception of how the broadcast media in Nigeria have fulfilled their surveillance role within the context of security. Their results showed that the public perceive media performance as below expectations. Generally, the media are very important stakeholders in every society. They need to keep vigil of the society, analyse them and draw the attention of the public and the government on the implications of the issues reported. In the process, the media can recommend preventive measures. The overall aim is to make the society a better place.