Zuzana Podracká1; Karen Henderson2; 1 LEAF Academy, Slovakia; 2 University of Ss Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, Slovakia
Discussion
This paper explores how the Covid-19 pandemic was covered in two major newspaper outlets in Slovakia. It focuses predominantly on the ways in which the pandemic was portrayed through expert opinion rather than personal stories throughout the first and second waves of the pandemic in Slovakia. It then explores the link between the emphasis on the expert rather than the personal and the communist-era separation of the political and the private in the public sphere. Does the current coverage of expert opinion indicate that more than 30 years later, featuring authentic personal stories linked to a major political event is considered neither desirable nor decisive in terms of public opinion formation? Whilst the paper does not aim to be a full comparative study, where relevant it draws on the similarities with, and differences from, the Covid-19 coverage in the British media, with the emphasis on the personal in the British press being of special interest.
