Responses to health risk and suffering

‘China’ in the Italian media discourses during the early stage of the Covid-19 pandemic

Dados Bibliográficos

ID11268353
AutoresMaria Paola Pofi (0000-0002-6241-7456, King's College London, autor correspondente), Wing-Fai Leung (0000-0002-0352-6011, King's College London)
Ano2022
Volume44
Fascículo4
Páginas820-836
Data de publicação2022-05-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoMedia Culture & Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0163-4437 • E-ISSN: 1460-3675
EditoraSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/01634437211053770
OpenAlexW3210608036
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas33

Italy was one of the first European countries affected by the Covid-19 pandemic after the beginning of the outbreak in China in January 2020. Applying critical discourse analysis and theories of the mediation of suffering, this article explores the discursive strategies used by the Italian media to represent China and Chinese people in relation to the outbreak in the early stage of the pandemic. Employing the theoretical frameworks of Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and other thinkers on biopolitics, racism, and emergency, the results bring to light the persistent ideologies behind the media representations of an imagined Other, which reflect existing discourses toward the Chinese community in Italy. In this study, the contentious discourses around China and the Chinese amidst the pandemic reveal the role of the Italian media in presenting risks, mediating suffering as a distant event and, later, as a national concern

Biopower · China · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Ideology · Mediation · Pandemic · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Gender Studies · Global Security and Public Health · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Medicine · Populism, Right-Wing Movements