Media Consensus and Divergences in Norway During the Second Wave of Coronavirus Infections

Abstract

With proportionally low rates of infection and deaths, Norway is depicted as a country with an effective health and safety policy for the current coronavirus pandemic. High levels of trust between the governors and the governed, and between the public and legacy media, resulted in general consensus around the infection control strategy for the most part of what was referred to as the “second wave” of the pandemic. This study examines newspaper articles from two Norwegian newspapers during two months in the autumn of 2020, when the corona situation was recognised as becoming a long-term concern. We document that as the authorities tried to deal with the situation by calling for a dugnad (collective effort) among the public, there was a conspicuous lack of journalism that questioned the policies of those authorities. In the absence of regular critical journalism, how does the press handle the relationship between necessary consensus to keep contagion down, and necessary debate about the policy and its effects? We present an overview of the general trends and patterns during the second wave of the pandemic in the autumn of 2020, with a particular emphasis on three cases where select Norwegian media diverged from merely reporting national health policy.