Discursive Othering in the Fighting Against COVID-19: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the China-Related Coverage of COVID-19

Abstract

This study takes the coverage of China related COVID-19 news as the data to examine how a global epidemic is being reported. Through a corpus assisted analysis of the keywords and collocations, together with a qualitative examination of the discursive strategies, we find that an epidemic paralyzed China who adopts ineffective epidemic prevention measures is constructed. Using headline as a mini narrative, and headlines as a moral lecture are the commonly adopted discursive strategies. The findings have some implications for the fair-minded communication across countries in the era of the global fight of the pandemic.