Pandemic discourse

Pandemics through the years have been mainly considered health problems. The World Health Organization (2010) defined it as “the worldwide spread of a new disease” (para. 1). As regards the swine flu in 2009, Fumento (2009) explained how the WHO changed the definition of pandemic at that time:

A previous official definition (and widely used unofficial one) required "simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness." Severity – that is, the number – is crucial, because seasonal flu always causes worldwide simultaneous epidemics. But one promulgated in April just days before the announcement of the swine flu outbreak simply eliminated severity as a factor (para. 5)

With the current global pandemic, severity cannot be denied as COVID-19 confirmed cases reached 101.46 million worldwide as of January 28, 2021, of which 2.18 million already died (Worldometer, 2021). Despite the presence of authorized and recommended COVID-19 vaccines (see Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021), there is no room for complacency in the wake of recent developments like the discovery of a new strain of the coronavirus. Even if it appears to spread faster, Bollinger and Ray (2020) wrote that they were not seeing “any indication that the new strain is more virulent or dangerous in terms of causing more severe COVID-19 disease” (Is the new strain of the coronavirus more dangerous? section, para. 1).

Weaponizing the pandemic

While the pandemic is defined along the lines of health issues, the political dimension also needs close scrutiny given Wong and Wong’s (2020) observation that “[p]andemics have been an area of less focus in global politics and human rights” (The view from human rights and global politics section, para. 2).

In a working paper titled “The Politics of Pandemics: Democracy, State Capacity, and Economic Inequality”, Wharton management professor Mauro Guillen also wrote: “In democracies, greater transparency, accountability, and public trust reduce the frequency and lethality of epidemics, shorten response time, and enhance people’s compliance with public health measures” (Knowledge@Wharton, 2020, para. 3). The reverse is apparently true in countries and territories under a regime of tyranny and impunity:

They face a double whammy because they don’t have resources, and they don’t have strong government programs,” said Guillen. Further, in dictatorships, the population typically does not have much trust in the government and its responses to an epidemic, he added. “That’s the worst of all situations. (Knowledge@Wharton, 2020, ‘Mosaic of Experiences’ section, para. 6)

Related to this, Hand (2020) stressed that there are countries using the COVID-19 pandemic to crack down on journalism. She cited nine countries in Europe, Africa and Asia as examples:

Hungary, Romania, Algeria, Thailand, and the Philippines are among the countries that have instituted new laws or invoked emergency decrees giving authorities the power to block websites, issue fines, or imprison people for producing or spreading false information during the pandemic. In Cambodia and Indonesia, social media users have been arrested after allegedly posting false news about the coronavirus. In Egypt, a journalist who had been critical of the government’s response to the pandemic and was detained for “spreading fake news” contracted the virus in custody and died before he could be tried. Even in South Africa, where freedom of expression is a constitutional right, politicians criminalized the publication of any statement made “with the intention to deceive any other person” about Covid-19, government measures to address the disease or – in a sign of the country’s grim experience with HIV/AIDS – a person’s infection status. (para. 3)

Not surprisingly, this issue of Media Asia contains articles on media and the COVID-19 pandemic. The issue line-up, however, also includes other media-related issues that may not be considered pandemics in the generic sense of the word but are still problems that need to be addressed.

The issue’s title “Pandemic semantics” is based not just on rhyme but also on wordplay. Treating the word “pandemic” as a noun, the title could refer to an outbreak’s meaning or logic. Treated as an adjective, on the other hand, it could be interpreted as prevalence of meaning or logic. This issue benefits from the title’s double meaning. The eight articles discuss not just the COVID-19 pandemic but also the prevalence of other “pandemics” in the figurative sense of the word.

Out of these eight articles, three are peer reviewed. Adharsh Raj, Anjali R and Manash P. Goswami (Migrants, miseries, and media: Measuring the prominence of the miseries of migrants in the coverage of leading Indian English dailies during COVID-19) explain the social responsibility of media platforms in informing the public about relevant topics while publishing news reports on migrant issues and stress that it is the duty of the elected government officials to support the needy. Prince Adu Gyamfi (Comparative analysis of CNN coverage of weather-related disasters in USA, Japan, and India) recommends that CNN in particular and news media organizations in general provide more coverage and in-depth analysis on their audiences to have a deeper understanding of weather-related disaster issues. Hideo Watanabe (The discursive construction of the international dispute over the East China Sea: A multimodal analysis of evaluations in online newspaper editorials in the Chinese and Japanese press) observes that Chinese and Japanese editorials’ visual images represent territorial dispute in their own respective ways, and that visual-written interaction analysis illustrates how different domains of evaluative meanings appear in the visual and written texts in the two sets of editorials.

This issue has two non-refereed commentaries. Rubal Kanozia, Sukhmani Kaur and Ritu Arya (Infodemic during the COVID-19 lockdown in India) stress the importance of self-restraint and remaining cautious as regards authenticity of messages from any kind of media in the wake of the current global pandemic. Sokphea Young (Internet, Facebook, competing political narratives, and political control in Cambodia) also echoes caution due to the crackdown on online activism and activities even if there appears to be more democratic space online than offline.

There are also three non-refereed reviews. Lasya Tandon (Defending the Web: Review of Reset by Ronald Deibert), Shantharaju S (The unrealized addiction: Review of the book Irresistible by Adam Alter) and Devapriya Sanyal (Not so shining [film review of Dolly Kitty aur woh chamatke sitare]) provide critical analyses of two books and a film which should motivate people to read and watch them (or have another look if they have done so already).

In analyzing the articles’ contents, may we all reflect on the media’s role in making sense of pandemics.

Notwithstanding the pandemic

That Media Asia’s current Editorial Board started working in 2020 only means that our first year was very challenging. Just like other peer reviewed journals, there were difficulties in adjusting to restrictions imposed by universities and governments.

There were highly qualified reviewers who had to politely decline our invitations to evaluate manuscripts because of their hectic (and anarchic) schedules brought about by work-from-home arrangements. This is most especially true for women researchers and academics who have the multiple burden of, among others, taking care of children, looking after the significant other, doing household chores, teaching courses online, conducting research and accommodating requests from journals like ours.

For those who closely followed the developments in our journal, it is no secret that three joint issues in 2018 and 2019 were published only last year. Even if we had to address this backlog, we still managed to publish two joint issues in 2020 with the titles “Repression/Assertion” and “Infodemics”. These five joint issues have a total of 18 refereed articles and 11 non-refereed ones (Arao, 2021).

That we managed to arrest the backlog and systematize operations may be rooted in the relatively fast turnaround time in handling manuscript submissions without sacrificing the quality and integrity of editing and peer review. Credit goes to the five hardworking associate editors – Lisa Brooten, Pamela A. Custodio, Roselyn Du, Maria Theresa M. Rivera and Nick Y. Zhang. Their level of professionalism is beyond compare. Aside from them, we also now have an Editorial Advisory Board composed of Sarah Cardey, Ataharul Chowdhury, Minjeong Kim, Srinivas Melkote, Eunice Barbara C. Novio and Paromita Pain.

The Editor, Associate Editors and Editorial Advisory Board comprise our journal’s Editorial Board whose 12 members come from Canada, Hong Kong, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, United Kingdom and United States of America. In terms of gender, eight are women and four are men. Much as we are open to expanding our Editorial Board, we hope to maintain this kind of gender distribution while increasing location representation.

Incidentally, we also redesigned the cover using the evolving media landscape as inspiration (see Arao, Brooten, Custodio, Du, Rivera & Zhang, 2020). We encourage readers and institutions to collect our print issues to physically display our journal’s “look and feel” on their shelves and in their libraries.

Based on our publicly available journal accountability report from January to December 2020, the manuscripts we received last year increased substantially compared to the previous years (Arao, 2021). This could be due to our two calls for papers in February and May, aside from the decision of Scopus in August to approve our journal’s application for indexing.

Being collegial also helped improve our professional relationship with various academics and researchers worldwide. That we share relevant information like 2020 acceptance rates of 11.48 percent (for refereed articles) and 90.00 percent (for non-refereed ones) reflects our desire to be more transparent (see Arao, 2021).

Please allow us to end by thanking the reviewers who shared their expertise, not to mention the authors who entrusted their manuscripts to us. We also acknowledge the publishers, Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) and Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, for their continuing support, particularly the editorial independence our journal enjoys.

For many of us, 2020 was a blur and 2021 remains a big question mark. Despite the uncertainty, we remain committed to a high degree of scholarship. We shall try our best to sustain our fast turnaround time because the authors, reviewers and readers deserve nothing less.

Pandemic notwithstanding, let us continue our research and let our voices be heard.