Pandemic communication as transformation

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. (Arundhati Roy, 2020)

The global pathways of the COVID-19 pandemic, the textured layers of the inequalities in pandemic outbreaks, the deep inequalities in ownership and patterns of access to basic preventive and healthcare resources, and the interpenetrating precarities produced by hegemonic pandemic responses divulge the violence of the capitalist-colonial project. The raced and classed nature of these inequalities necessitate critical theorizing that attends to the relationship between communication and the organizing structures of racial capitalism. Also, the COVID-19 pandemic is constituted amidst global changes in ecosystems and changing human–animal relationships and mobilities, foregrounding the interpenetrating relationship between climate colonialism and the crises it produces.

How does communication theory explain, interpret, and critique communicative practices around the pandemic that are constituted amidst the interpenetrating linkages between colonialism and capitalism? How to theorize the communicative practices generating pandemic disinformation and hate, rooted in networks of white supremacy, and directed at communities at the margins? How do communities at the margins build communication strategies that sustain them, offer an organizing ethic of care and mutuality, and resist the disinformation seeded and circulated by white supremacists and other connected hate infrastructures such as Hindutva in India and far-right in Israel? What role does communication practice play in resisting the organizing structures that (re)produce raced, classed, gendered inequalities rendered visible during the pandemic?

The articles in this volume collectively explore diverse forms of communicative practices amidst the pandemic, negotiating the organizing structures that both constrain and enable everyday life in crisis. These communicative practices depict the dynamic nature of individual, relational, and community agency, reflected in community resilience amidst the proliferation of stigmatizing hate, the roles of organizational and supervisor support in constituting the resilience of young adult workers, the role of stories in constituting the negotiations of healthcare amidst the pandemic, and the organizing practices that support the negotiations of the pandemic.

Shinya Uekusa explores the relational role of community translators in mediating and negotiating the communicative rights of communities at the margins amidst the pandemic, interrogating top-down forms of crisis response that are disconnected from questions of communicative inequality. The evocative article by Anis Rahman and colleagues draws on autoethnographic notes to render visible the precarities of academic life amidst the pandemic, exacerbated by the ongoing neoliberal transformation of the academe. They invite us to communicative practices of self-reflection, negotiation of labor, and collaborative dialogue as anchors to building and sustaining equity in the academe.

Amidst the global rise of inequalities, the accelerated diffusion of disinformation on platforms, and the depleting trust in institutions and government, how does pandemic communication address the disinformation ecosystem? Jarim Kim and Hyegyu Lee explore the role of trust in government and institutions in constituting the believability of rumors. Lina Li and colleagues examine the effectiveness of government in debunking disinformation on a digital platform.

I am heartened to witness studies from diverse global contexts reflected in this collection that offer empirically rooted, contextually anchored, and theoretically robust dialogues with an array of communicative practices that include the micro-, the meso-, and the macro-. They offer us guides for ways in which dialogues with communication theories are embedded in communication practice, situated in conversation with the organizing structures that constitute the empiricism of lived experiences in crisis. It is fulfilling to witness a wide array of methods and methodological innovations at play in examining, interpreting, and critiquing pandemic communicative practices. These innovations invite us to imagine collectively, alongside Arundhati Roy, the openings for disciplinary transformations that break with the past and create new scripts for our collective futures.