Cholera Pandemic, Editorial Policy of the Newspaper „Iveria“ and the Specifics of Coverage

Abstract

The experience of complex coverage of the pandemic in the Georgian press dates back to the 1890s, the period of the spread of the Fifth Cholera Pandemic. The research topic of the paper is studied in the context of the publications of the newspaper "Iveria" being a classic example of the Georgian democratic journalism.  As a result of classification of the material, observation of current events and contextual study, Iveria editorial policy during the Cholera period was revealed by use of the content analysis method, which presents the strategic vision of the newspaper's editor, Ilia Chavchavadze, and creates the publication agenda. Framing theory is used as a theoretical framework for the research, through which the main characteristics of pandemic coverage in Iveria, subtexts and messages of publicist articles were determined. In 1892 cholera became widespread throughout the Russian Empire, the Caspian region, in Asian and European Countries. The publication consistently and promptly covered the pandemic. Iveria's publicism as regard to the Cholera issues includes news, reviews, editorial and thematic articles by Vazha Pshavela, Aleksandre Kipshidze, Stefane Chrelashvili and others. The publications are characterized by their clearly defined purpose, the topics are deeply thought out, with different semantic meaning, individual perceptions and significant publicistic emphasis, which demonstrate the cholera epidemic, as a crisis, with a broad political and social perspective. The pandemic is accompanied by a stream of disinformation, myths and icons, which was typical of the reality of that time as well. "Iveria" contradicted the false information with the well-argued truth. For the purpose of comparison, an example of a modern pandemic, Covid-19, is interesting, when the mass media not infrequently spreads a stream of disinformation - "infodemia", which creates different narratives and is motivated by geostrategic, political and commercial interests. The results of the research confirm that the newspaper "Iveria" covered the pandemic with a conceptual editorial policy taking into account the interests of the country and is a clear example of responsible publication even for the modern media. Obviously, the "time factor" plays a big role in the quality of mass media, however the experience of Georgian classical journalism is still relevant today. Keywords: Ilia Chavchavadze, Iveria, pandemic, cholera.