Discursive structures and power relations in Covid-19 knowledge production

Abstract

This article critically examines the discourse around the Covid-19 pandemic to investigate the widespread polarisation evident in social media debates. The model of epidemic psychology holds that initial adverse reactions to a new disease spread through linguistic interaction. The main argument is that the mediation of the pandemic through social media has fomented the effects of epidemic psychology in the reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic by providing continued access to commentary and linguistic interaction. This social interaction in the absence of any knowledge on the new disease can be seen as a discourse of knowledge production, conducted largely on social media. This view, coupled with a critical approach to the power relations inherent in all processes of knowledge production, provides an approach to understanding the dynamics of polarisation, which is, arguably, issue-related and not along common ideological lines of left and right. The paper critiques two discursive structures of exclusion, the terms science and conspiracy theory, which have characterised the knowledge production discourse of the Covid-19 pandemic on social media. As strategies of dialogic contraction, they are based on a hegemonic view of knowledge production and on the simplistic assumption of an emancipated position outside ideology. Such an approach, though well-intentioned, may ultimately undermine social movements of knowledge production and thus threaten the very values it aims to protect. Instead, the paper proposes a Foucauldian approach that problematises truth claims and scientificity as always ideological and that is aware of power as inherent to all knowledge production.

Subjectivity of Discourse Constructions in News Discourse by Integrating Construction Grammar and Critical Discourse Analysis

“…Constructions themselves are meaningful in the process of communication or language use in a certain cognitive context or communicative context, and the meanings of constructions exist in the whole discourse. We should be aware of power as inherent to all knowledge production [16]. The discourse construction, constructed according to CG, is a pairing relationship between forms, features, and functions of discourse units.…”

A values-based approach to knowledge in the public's representations of climate change on social media

“…They have been applied in similar ways before with social media data. For example, Bisiada (2021) used Foucauldian discourse analysis to analyze the production of knowledge about Covid-19 on Twitter, Jang and Hart (2015) used qualitative framing analysis to analyze Twitter data about climate change, Riley et al (2016) applied a narrative analysis to the analysis of global warming narratives on Chinese Weibo posts, while multimodal analysis has been used to analyze climate change communication on social media, including nonexpert knowledge of climate change and expressions of care for the environment on Tic-Toc (e.g., Hautea et al, 2021).…”

“This is the real face of Covid-19!”: How Refused Knowledge Communities Entered the Pandemic Arena

“…These people generally embraced a wide spectrum of refused knowledge involving both 'doing their own research' (Attwell et al, 2018) on the web and forming relationships in their everyday lives with others who 'think like them'. This process led to a juxtaposition of pandemic discourses in which the science-based evidence and institutional experts were opposed to the so-called conspiracy theories and fake news (Bisiada, 2021). Social media played a pivotal role in polarising public discourse (Zollo et al, 2015) in 'quarantined society' (Aiello et al, 2021) by amplifying the divide between what was considered refused knowledge and science.…”

“…8.3). A popular meme illustrates the idea that these new objects, now part of "quarantined society" everyday life (Aiello et al, 2021;Bisiada, 2021) had configured a new citizen subject to constant control by apps and wearable devices, made obedient by masks and thus perfectly integrated into surveillance society (Fig. 8.3).…”