This article follows previous research arguing that skills of call center agents, which often include emotional labor, communication, procedural and substantive knowledge, and articulation work, are mostly invisible. Moving beyond previous analyses linking call centers to low-skilled standardized work, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork and transpositional analysis in the Philippines and the UK to show which real-world processes and written practices make agents’ skills not only invisible and illegible to industry outsiders but also to their managers. I argue that textualization practices such as data entry and script work are important, and that deemphasizing quantification in favor of qualitative assessment could produce better outcomes for agents and skill appreciation by others.

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The articles in this issue examine the transformations and adaptations of place branding during the Covid-19 pandemic and post-lockdowns. Using five case studies, they examine how Covid-19 has changed place branding in Italy, Brazil, Japan, the Philippines, and France during different stages of the pandemic. The articles explore questions concerning how to (re)brand a global viral hotspot; the interplay of Covid-19, place branding and tourism; populism, nation (re)building and Covid-19 management; as well as the political nature and impact of place branding such as nation-building and nationalism during the Covid-19 pandemic and in a post-lockdown world. The articles examine place branding as semiotics with respect to how campaigns are entextualized and re-contextualized. They focus on tropes such as morality, fun, (lack of) mobility, and the future/time. Overall, this issue argues that Covid-19 is an event for place branding and that new tropes are likely to continue to emerge and endure.

Applying sociolinguistic perspectives, this issue explores the most recent developments in call center research and the impact call center work has on agents. Significant issues are addressed in call center interactions, including web chat, agent stigmatization, agent resistance, agent training and the impact of Covid-19. The essays provide a forum where developments are critically reviewed and future areas of research explored, including how call center work can be improved. The first article by Nielsen addresses the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in India and working from home through the notions of chronotopes. The second article in the issue by Lockwood develops a framework for the assessment of written web chats in offshore call centers. The third essay by Friginal examines how the voice assessment of Filipino agents can be improved through caller clarification sequences. Tovar’s paper, the fourth paper in this collection, focuses on the strain that working in a call center creates for agents and how they resolve this. The fifth paper by Orthaber examines resistance and passive compliance in call center interactions in a Slovenian call center using turn-by-turn micro-analysis of service conversations with a focus on silences. Despite the different angles, the papers share themes of resistance (creative compliance) and the development of a new register of call center speak, while also highlighting agency among call center workers.

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