{"id":985,"date":"2022-07-05T14:47:26","date_gmt":"2022-07-05T12:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crisis-discourse.nerdline.online\/?p=985"},"modified":"2022-10-17T13:28:12","modified_gmt":"2022-10-17T11:28:12","slug":"covid-19-and-exclusion-discourse-approaches-and-a-plea-for-a-media-aesthetic-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crisis-discourse.net\/de\/2022\/07\/covid-19-and-exclusion-discourse-approaches-and-a-plea-for-a-media-aesthetic-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"Covid-19 and exclusion. Discourse approaches and a plea for a media-aesthetic perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crises[1]<\/a> are transition phases from one political, institutional and normative ordering regime to another[2]<\/a>. These periods of change come along with a loss of certainties, intensive knowledge negotiation and (new) knowledge formation that take place \u2013 and become graspable \u2013 in discursive practices and events, such as in day-to-day interaction, political discourse and media communication. Far from being objective givens, crises are thus inherently discursive phenomena being discerned, constructed and handled\/dealt with as current states of affairs with particular features, potential causes and noticeable impacts on everyday life. As such, crisis discourse bears witness to, and provides fundamental insights into a world that is subject to negotiation.<\/p>\n

The worldwide Covid-19 pandemic constitutes a paramount example of critical loss of continuity, certainty and control on various levels, be it political, cultural or social. In order to cope with these challenges, governments took a variety of measures that are not only intended to control the pandemic, but at the same time end up shaping our everyday perceptions and experiences. One overarching and recurrent example is the mask \u2013 a measure that addresses a broad group of people who by wearing it are considered to be protecting both themselves and others and in an act of solidarity. However, what we find are also measures and actions that do not address the general public, but are geared to particular groups of people.<\/p>\n

To us, this became particularly obvious when we saw the pictures and news reporting on the Covid-19 outbreak in the T\u00f6nnies slaughterhouses in Germany in mid-2020. The factory and the collective accommodations for \u2013 mostly \u2013 migrant workers were barricaded by fencing and controlled by the police \u2013 a rather exceptional measure that has not often been used in Germany in regards to other sites where large outbreaks occurred. This example is also particular as it is often migrant workers who work in these slaughterhouses under quite precarious working conditions[3]<\/a>. This led us to reflect on how diverse social groups are addressed differently during the crisis and how speeches, legislative texts, media reports, but also pictures and public signs not only target, but also produce the \u201cgroups\u201d and ascribe certain characteristics to them.<\/p>\n

From this perspective, crisis discourse is based on differentiations between various social groups: vaccinated and non-vaccinated people, system-relevant professional sectors and \u2018others\u2019, businesses that need or deserve government aid and those that do not, etc. In doing so, Covid-crisis discourse raises and negotiates questions of community and solidarity, as well as of their respective boundaries. The groups themselves and the \u2018knowledge\u2019 about them, their relevance and visibility and particularly the inclusion and exclusion processes associated with them, however, do not represent objective realities but are discursive constructions of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Discourse analytical perspectives on exclusion: an overview<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Unsurprisingly, such constructions of \u2018knowledge\u2019 have attracted scholarly attention, especially the emergent constructions of who constitutes a \u2018group\u2019 and the attribution of certain group \u2018characteristics\u2019. For the purpose of gaining an overview of the body of literature existing to date, we searched for titles, abstracts and keywords in SCOPUS using the search string (covid AND discourse AND (othering OR exclusion OR inclusion OR ingroup OR in-group OR outgroup OR out-group)) (search date: November 13, 2021). This search yielded 72 results in total from which we excluded publications not discussing our core topic, research notes and non-English publications by screening the abstracts.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

The word cloud of keywords gives a first impression of the diversity of perspectives: the publications choose a wide range of theoretical approaches, concepts and perspectives (such as \u201cstigma\u201d or \u201cprejudice\u201d), concentrate on specific countries or arenas and draw on different discourse theoretical schools or methods (such as Critical Discourse Analysis or Corpus-assisted Analysis).<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9

\u00a9 based on the keywords given in the original publications and created using Wortwolken.com (three publications did not provide keywords). Elaboration: Christiane Barnickel and Dorothea Horst.<\/p><\/div>\n

In the following, we will focus on two aspects:<\/p>\n