Conference on Media & Democratic Governance – Gershowitz 2020
A year later, it’s clear that the Covid-19 pandemic has changed the world, lives, professions, and indeed everything in lasting ways, and glimpses of that transformed system are already emerging. In education, many countries are in the middle of massive experiments in new ways of teaching and learning, and new ways of dividing responsibilities between home, school, and work. Media professionals, civil servants, businesses, and many others learned how to work from home.
While the pandemic has unleashed a wave of innovation in several sectors that has accelerated change and prompted blue-sky thinking throughout the system, it also exposed lots of failures in journalism practice and governance processes. The wave of misinformation in the media exacerbated the already fragile credibility of the media while deepening the trust deficit in public administration. At the same time, inequality and marginalization of vulnerable population persisted.
How can societies keep breaking down barriers of inequity through what we learned in the pandemic? What are the failures and successes of the different levels of government during the pandemic? Did the media provide appropriate guidance to the society and political leaders during the pandemic? Overall, did media practitioners and government functionaries find new ways to spark their creativity, harness technology, and provide the services they need to succeed?
These questions and more will be the focus of the 9th Gershowitz Conference on Media and Democratic Governance scheduled for November 5, 2021.
Strategy session of the steering committee, Annual Gershowitz Conference on Media & Democratic Governance
Theme: Pandemic Paralysis: What the Media and Government Learned
advancing knowledge in media and democracy worldwide
2021 Gershowitz Conference on Media and Democratic Governance
