We’ve been living under the threat of COVID-19 for 2 years since 2020. During the period, governments are trying to tell citizens how to stay away from the virus is via official channels, but mainly by social medias. Which is a type of media discourse.
Media discourse can be understood as media producers’ way of transmitting a message and create conversation between audiences, including news reports and publishers. It can be categorized into different types of discourse in way of publish, social impact and system of value etc. In another word, politicians can use political discourse to their purpose and medias producers uses media discourse to transmit certain information to create discourse in the public.
China, as an example country of using lock down to block the virus, uses media platforms to update information of number of infections in particular regions. In this way, media can keep citizens alert about the virus by the geo information provided. Citizens can know how many people caught the virus and where had the infected gone. Which they can prevent going to these ‘high risk’ areas to protect themselves from the virus. On the other hand, it can also keep citizens frighten about the virus by showing the number of infection. Which can also convince people to stay at home and follow the government’s guideline. March 2022, Shanghai experienced a peak of infection. At that time, Shanghai got over 20k increase of infected every single day. It raised concerns and raised many discussions on the internet about Shanghai. Many Shanghai people was trying to escape from the lock down even some of them already got infected by the virus. People on the internet see them as ‘apostate’ not following the lock down instruction and abuse them. As the report of infected updates daily, people argue under every report. Some hope the pandemic pass soon, some curse who don’t follow the government’s guideline.
Although the lock down may be the best suiting strategy for such a huge country like China, there are still many people unsatisfied with this propaganda, and China also got criticized by many western countries, like the US said ‘violating human right’. For the people spreading ideas against the lock down, media platforms delete their posts and ban their account as a warn. For the extraterritorial forces, Chinese medias state that the US is one of the culprits making the virus spread due to their laziness on managing the population circulation but keep blaming on other countries. The US’s uncooperative make the world suffered from the virus for 2 years. Another reason is that the US uses COVID-19 as an political propaganda to attack China. The US simply identify COVID-19 as a Wuhan virus makes no sense, but keep stating that the virus was leaked from one of the ‘biological laboratory’ for ‘bio weapons’. ‘It only shows the US’s inability’, Chinese medias state. Medias from two countries keep fighting each other on cyberspace. In China, most of the people believes that the US is responsible for the virus due to the misinformation from some of the ‘filtered’ media outlets. Some people who hold different perspective will start arguing with them which the media successfully created a discourse.
In conclusion, media discourse is useful for creating conversations among audiences on media platforms. It can have different purposes depending on its context as it is a powerful tool that can shape public opinion and influence social behavior. Therefore, it is important to be critical of the media discourse we consume and produce.
Hi！You give a very good example of the importance of media discourse in a pandemic indeed. Combined with the Chinese example, it is easy to see that the Chinese government used media discourse to control covid-19 very well, which is not easy for a country with such a large population.
You are giving a good example of how public and government doing a discourse, and it is plain to see that Chinese government is trying their best to avoid people panic while it is in COVID-19 quarantine. This example did prove that media discourse is important if government try to send positive impact.
Yes, I think in general, China has done very well in this crisis, the country with the largest population in the world has the lowest death rate. But even so, the Western countries are still not satisfied, they let the Westerners believe through the media that China is the culprit of this crisis.