Listened to an excellent discussion about clean air chaired by @dom_ma and including @c_s_wallace. A key…

Listened to an excellent discussion about clean air chaired by @dom_ma and including @c_s_wallace. A key topic for discussion was how to de-individualise public health again, to get scale and traction on topics like clean air. I think the bad guys have already shown us how. /1 https://t.co/VRwowT6cJH

You tabloidise information (I may have invented a verb there). That's what tabloid media is. It's not just scaremongering and sensationalism, it's much, much more precise. It collapses the distinction between individual and collective. /2 https://t.co/tHNF6OP3x4

You don't need a million messages to build a collective narrative. You need one tabloid message, to go viral. The whole purpose of tabloidism (might have invented a noun there too) as a genre is to *individualise collective issues*. That's why it works. /3 https://t.co/PaMGRABbwY

It uses the universal/collective emotion of a given situation to give it immediate collective relevance, even if it's about just one person. Because emotions are universal, not individual. They convey a universal message. I've Tweeted a bit about the need to go tabloid. /4 https://t.co/ERJK897R6H

To universalise the disaster of Covid by constantly posting individual stories about it, in tabloid style. And that just means being highly emotional and engaging and focused on *individual* stories, not fake or misinformation. /5 https://t.co/AdNqrf0gWu

You can try it right here on Twitter. I guarantee you'll get a lot more follows or likes if you Tweet in a tabloid genre i.e. powerful emotional stories about individuals. They needn't be melodramatic, just individual and engaging, because life is that. They go viral. /6

That's how you get Covid attention to scale. Flood the zone with tabloid stories. About fresh (or filthy) air, or about the insanity of destroying a public focus, on anything. Doesn't have to mention Covid, the baddies won by tabloiding 'freedom' instead. /end