Paper short abstract:

Our paper analyses a collection of articles which include pandemic models from two Anglo-American daily newspapers to discuss the power of models in storying futures and sketching characters.

Paper long abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic created an abrupt increase in uncertainty. This led the general public and decision makers alike to turn to expert knowledge of the past and present, in an attempt to plot the ongoing crisis and post-pandemic trajectories. Epidemiological and infection models are forms of expert knowledge often reported by mass-media, informing public debates, policies, and the collective imagination.

Models sketch narrative characters, explicitly or implicitly (Polletta, 2015). They define types of people and populations through parameters of contagion and survival, and imply evaluations of social and moral worth. They quantify (Espeland and Stevens, 2008) alternative social trajectories and commensurate (Espeland and Stevens, 1998) diverse interests and activities. Models also enact a discursive production of temporality, through time work (Flaherty, 2003), shaping readers’ invocations of history, definitions of the present situation, and anticipations of pandemic and post-pandemic futures.

How do models formulate the pandemic timeline and, consequently, project the future? How do they rely on scientific knowledge to lump and split (Zerubavel, 1996) risk categories? Our paper analyses a collection of articles which include pandemic models from two Anglo-American daily newspapers, The New York Times and The Guardian, published between January-June 2020 and January-June 2021, to discuss the power of models in storying futures and sketching characters.