2,900+ articles on COVID-19 in the EARS dashboard

The EARS dashboard is a collection of summaries from European media articles on religion and society. Between early January 2020 and mid-September 2021, we have added over 2,900 summaries on the topic of COVID-19 and its relation to religion. This means that 31% of all article summaries added during this time relate to COVID-19 in some way.

Insights on COVID-19 and religion

The word cloud below was generated from the dashboard. As can be seen, this collection of summaries leads to some interesting insights into the relationship between religion and COVID-19.

• Religious holidays were a major theme when discussing COVID-19 across Europe. For example, the coronavirus crisis highly affected the celebration of Ramadan, Passover, and Easter.
• Leaders – both religious and nonreligious – play significant roles. For example, note the importance of Pope Francis and the Vatican, but also churches and the government in this word cloud. You can read more about the connection between COVID-19 and leadership in this article.
• Vaccination efforts across the continent led to responses from religious groups and institutions. For example, we saw how Christian leaders supported the vaccine and how confidence was built in the vaccine among British Muslims. We also discussed the Vatican’s complex history with vaccines and ethical questions around the COVID-19 vaccine.
• Religious groups have been greatly affected by the situation caused by COVID-19. Based on the insights from the dashboard, we have written articles about its effect on Jewish and Muslim communities, on Christian and Islamic funerals, and on worship, religious singing, and church membership. In addition, COVID-19 has strongly impacted spiritual abuse, antisemitism, and other existing tensions.

What is next?

We see that media coverage on the relationship between COVID-19 and religion is slowly declining. 35% of all news summaries on the EARS dashboard covered the topic of COVID-19 in April 2021 – when the number of COVID-19 cases spiked across Europe as well.^[1] However, this number fell to 6% in September 2021. Nevertheless, our analyst team will keep covering the news on religion and COVID-19 as published in media across Europe.

Learn more on the EARS dashboard

By creating a free account on the EARS dashboard, you can recreate this search or retrieve many other insights on topics such as leadership, protest, tolerance, and more. Read this step-by-step guide to learn how to activate advanced search on the dashboard.

Anne Clerx

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Sources

^[1] Coronavirus Cases: Statistics and Charts