Paper short abstract:

Covid has come to be treated as a mythic disease. Alongside other well known illnesses such as Cancer or Aids, Covid has acquired cultural capital and disrupted traditional notions of body and care. This paper examines the role of digitisation in this phenomenon.

Paper long abstract:

When Covid first became known to the general populous in the UK it was something that was happening abroad – and othered accordingly. When the first cases were reported in the UK, skepticism reigned, and cases were likened to Flu. However, it did not take long for COVID to gain a cultural classification as something more than a mere seasonal illness. As the first pandemic within a post-digital world, the use of social media and other forms of digital communication dissemination have helped to transform covid into a mythic disease. The authors of this paper consider how digitisation has contributed to the transformation of ill people into dangerous bodies and asks what role public health messages have in this shift. Drawing on ethnographic vignettes gathered from an adapted form of immersive cohabitation, this paper comments on the impact public health messaging has on the crafting of cultural notions of illness and the effect this has on individual’s lived experience.