Risk Communication about COVID-19 in India: Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis of Mainstream News Reports about India’s Wave I and Wave II Outbreaks

Abstract

This study employed critical rhetorical analysis and corpus-assisted discourse analysis in analyzing the news coverage of India’s transition from Wave I to Wave II Focusing on news coverage from the Times of India, we examined how COVID-19 was constructed in the public and technical spheres and how India’s COVID-19 risk communication was shaped by unique geopolitical, cultural, infrastructural, and material factors. Our analysis highlights the tendency to datify COVID as statistics and case numbers, which both dehumanizes the patients and caretakers while erasing human suffering. It also reveals the critical roles played by the geopolitical, socioeconomic, infrastructural, and material conditions in shaping the national and regional capacities to respond to such far-reaching crises. Last but not least, affect and trust play prominent roles in the public coping with emerging pandemics given the uncertainties on all fronts, and thus should be centrally highlighted and addressed in public policies.