The spread of the COVID19 virus, insecurities and fear around the pandemic fueled nationalist tendencies and increased authoritarian tactics of governments all over the world.
In North America for instance, Anti-Asian racism increased, when US president Donald Trump dubbed the COVID19 virus the “Chinese virus”. A nationalist agenda has been strengthened in many places, including Europe and the MENA region, and hateful narratives blaming not only Chinese, but also minority groups, refugees and others for the global pandemic, legitimizing a retreat to national borders, etc. are spread in different media outlets.
The aim is to investigate processes of “Othering” with regards to COVID 19: Who is held responsible for the Corona crisis in different countries? (How) does racism and discrimination unfold in media coverage related to coverage on COVID 19? What (in)sensitive language can be distinguished here and who is speaking?
The research resulted in the following papers and presentations:
Richter, Carola; Al-Shami, Abdulrahman; Khalifa, Sahar; Osman, Soheir & Mundua, Samuel (2021). The virus of the ‘others’? Corona and discursive othering in Arab media. Journal of Arabic and Muslim Media Research, 14(1), 3-24. DOI: 10.1386/jammr_00022_1