Confronting COVID-19: constructing and contesting legitimacy through the media in Chinese contexts

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the world to uncharted waters. Governments urgently need to figure out how to best handle the global health crisis and its impact on people’s lives. As well as struggling to contain and manage the pandemic, they also face challenges in maintaining their legitimacy. The eight contributions in this special issue provide a much-needed snapshot of whether and if so, to what extent and how government legitimacy was constructed and contested through the media in Chinese contexts, including mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau, during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2021. This article discusses government legitimacy and the role of the media to provide a conceptual and contextual framework for this special issue. It will start with a discussion about the relationship between government legitimacy, crisis and the media before addressing the impact of the COVID19 pandemic on government legitimacy and the existing literature on this topic. This article will then explain the importance of focusing on Chinese contexts, followed by introducing each of the eight contributions.