Power, Media, and the Covid-19 Pandemic: Framing Public Discourse

This edited collection provides an in-depth, interdisciplinary critique of the acts of public communication disseminated during a major global crisis.

Encompassing contributions from academics working in the fields of politics, environmentalism, citizens’ rights, state theory, cultural studies, journalism, and discourse/rhetoric, the book offers an original insight into the relationship between the various social forces that contributed to the ’Covid narrative’. The subjects analysed here include: the performance of the ’mainstream’ media, the quality of political ’messaging’ and argumentation, the securitised state and racism in Brazil, the growth of ’catastrophic management’ in UK universities, emergent journalistic practices in South Africa, homelessness and punitive dispossession, the pandemic and the history of eugenics, and the Chinese media’s attempt to disguise discriminatory practices. This is one of the first comparative studies of the various rationales offered for state/corporate intervention in public life. Delving beneath established political tropes and state rhetoric, it identifies the power relations exposed by an event that was described as unprecedented and unique, but was in fact comparable to other major global disruptions. As governments insisted on distinguishing their own propaganda from unregulated disinformation, their increasingly sceptical ’publics’ pursued their own idiosyncratic solutions to the crisis, while the apparent sacrifice of a host of citizens - from the most dedicated to the most vulnerable - suggested that inequality and exploitation remained at the heart of the social order.

Power, Media, and the Covid-19 Pandemic is essential reading for students, researchers and academics in media, communication and journalism studies, politics, environmental sciences, critical discourse analysis, cultural studies, and the sociology of health.

Stuart Price is Professor of Media and Political Discourse, Director of the Media Discourse Centre, Editor of Journalism, Power and Investigation, author of Corbyn and the Media, co-Editor of the online, peer-reviewed, open-access Journal IJMD, co-Editor of the book series ’Protest, Media and Culture’ and the author of a number of monographs, book chapters and articles on Media, Communication and Politics.

Ben is a Senior Lecturer in Media Production and Media Discourse at De Montfort University. Ben has worked in Education for over twenty years across a range of disciplines including Media Production, Digital Design, Media Studies, and Film Production. Ben has also worked in a freelance capacity as an editor and journalist and currently runs the BSc (Hons) in Visual Effects.