COVID-19 and the Political Economy of Mass Hysteria

Philipp Bagus, José Antonio Peña-Ramos and Antonio Sanchez-Bayon ()
Additional contact information
José Antonio Peña-Ramos: Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universidad Autónoma de Chile, Providencia 7500912, Chile

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 4, 1-15

Abstract: In this article, we aim to develop a political economy of mass hysteria. Using the background of COVID-19, we study past mass hysteria. Negative information which is spread through mass media repetitively can affect public health negatively in the form of nocebo effects and mass hysteria. We argue that mass and digital media in connection with the state may have had adverse consequences during the COVID-19 crisis. The resulting collective hysteria may have contributed to policy errors by governments not in line with health recommendations. While mass hysteria can occur in societies with a minimal state, we show that there exist certain self-corrective mechanisms and limits to the harm inflicted, such as sacrosanct private property rights. However, mass hysteria can be exacerbated and self-reinforcing when the negative information comes from an authoritative source, when the media are politicized, and social networks make the negative information omnipresent. We conclude that the negative long-term effects of mass hysteria are exacerbated by the size of the state.

Keywords: mass hysteria; nocebo effects; contagion; mass media; social media; public health; law and economics; political economy; groupthink; culture of fear; emotional contagion; anxiety; policy error; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/4/1376/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/4/1376/ (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: COVID-19 and the Political Economy of Mass Hysteria (2021)
Working Paper: Covid-19 and the Political Economy of Mass Hysteria (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:4:p:1376-:d:492150

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().