As the need for sensitizing media students on Disaster Journalism and Crisis Communication (especially in the context of Covid-19 pandemics-induced difficulties in Nepal) was realized, the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism at Kantipur City College (KCC) conducted a webinar course in collaboration with Talbot Campus, Bournemouth University, England from 29 April till 1 May 2020. A total of 45 students and former graduates participated in the course, most of them being directly into mainstream journalism.
Pandemic and health-related media products that are comprehensible and useful to people in general are required in larger scale than ever before, but the working journalists in Nepal were seen to only seldom focus on what actually is required. The need for empirical, science-backed background-knowledge of health issues was highly realized.
In this backdrop, the webinar course on Disaster Journalism was conducted as a timely step to sensitize them about the theme and motivate them to produce media products which could be very useful in times of public health crisis.