This book explores the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the role of national and international media and governments in the initial coverage of the developing crisis. With specific chapters written mostly by scholars based in these countries, it examines how the media in India, China, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Taiwan, Bangladesh, New Zealand and the USA responded to this pandemic. The volume particularly addresses their role in both countering and spreading misinformation and in the politicization of the health crisis. The chapters highlight various issues specific to individual countries, such as racism, conspiracy theories, Sinophobia, stigmatization of victims, media bias, and othering. The book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars in the areas of journalism, media, health, and communication studies, and will be of interest to journalists and crisis communication practitioners who wish to understand the multi-dimensional aspects of reporting on a novel and evolving pandemic threat.

This book explores the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the role of national and international media and governments in the initial coverage of the developing crisis. With specific chapters written mostly by scholars based in these countries, it examines how the media in India, China, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Taiwan, Bangladesh, New Zealand and the USA responded to this pandemic. The volume particularly addresses their role in both countering and spreading misinformation and in the politicization of the health crisis. The chapters highlight various issues specific to individual countries, such as racism, conspiracy theories, Sinophobia, stigmatization of victims, media bias, and othering. The book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars in the areas of journalism, media, health, and communication studies, and will be of interest to journalists and crisis communication practitioners who wish to understand the multi-dimensional aspects of reporting on a novel and evolving pandemic threat.

The book examines the impact of COVID-19 on economic and political processes, contending that the global reaction to the pandemic has been the largest failure in scientific policy in a generation. Unlike earlier crises, it has impacted the world's leading economies while also paralyzing international ties, provoking diverse and far-reaching reactions. The authors posit that no effective global response has been launched in response to this global catastrophe. Rather, governments have implemented a variety of policies based on the costs of virus protection against financial closure and isolation. In doing so, there has been a resurgence in nationalism. This book aims to provide comprehensive understanding of how the pandemic has widened political gaps, and demarcates what the long-term consequences might be in terms of policies and economics in the wake of the pandemic. Of interest to scholars in political geography, development studies, international relations, public administration, and health science, this book presents key observations on existing theories of global politics pivoted around the COVID-19 pandemic, and its ramifications on individuals, groups, and ultimately, the nation state.

Asian Canadian activism, resistance, and art of the 1970s and 80s Laughing Back at Empire is a ground-breaking examination of The Asianadian, one of Canada’s first anti-racist, anti- sexist, and anti-homophobic magazines. Over the course of its seven-year run, the small but mighty magazine led a nation-wide dialogue for all Canadians on the struggles and social issues that concerned Asians in Canada. The Asianadian established a national platform for then-emerging Asian Canadian writers, artists, musicians, activists, and scholars like Sky Lee, Jim Wong-Chu, Joy Kogawa, Himani Bannerji, and Paul Yee. Columns like “On the Firing Line” and the “Dubious Achievement Awards” provided space to laugh back at the embarrassing concoction of Orientalist stereotypes in the media and to critique inconsistencies and superficialities within Canada’s newfound multicultural image. Situating the story of The Asianadian within the history of Canada, Angie Wong celebrates and builds on the work of its creators from the Asianadian Resource Workshop. Extensive interview material with the co-founding members, editors, volunteers, readers, and contributors captures their dedication and spirit of anti-racist collectivism. Wong’s analysis helps to dismantle cultural assumptions that have relegated Asian Canadian history, contributions, and injustices to the periphery of Canadian experience and identity. On the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic and a resurgence of anti-Asian racism, Laughing Back at Empire amplifies the voices that speak, shout, and laugh together at empire’s self-congratulatory and exclusionary narratives.

The Misuse, Misrepresentation, and Politicization of Statistics in American Society critically examines the early measurement efforts of several government agencies responsible for some of the most widely watched social indicators on unemployment, life expectancy, crime, and population. It argues that official statistics are dubious at best, better seen not so much as objective barometers of social life but rather as socially constructed metrics that are easily manipulated and often politicized. This book argues that official statistics powerfully frame social reality, ultimately helping to determine who counts and what matters in society. It makes the case that, as with other types of official accounts, data derived from government sources needs to be regarded skeptically and systematically investigated. This book concludes that official statistics are a kind of sanctioned cover up of everyday reality, hiding the true extent of joblessness, distorting the real increase in life expectancy, obscuring where crime actually happens, and understating the undeniable growth of minority populations.

In a world dominated by the visual, this book presents how a focus on the sounded experience and acts of listening may carve a way to reformulate emerging publics, create space for critical multilingual engagement and deepen recognition of emancipatory practices. Examining the emerging logics and rhythms among a group of post-EU accession UK Polish migrants, this book focuses on the semiotic processes through which contemporary moving bodies and communities place themselves in sociolinguistic landscapes. It considers how they develop metrics to account for sociolinguistic change and authenticate their projects and practices in transnational timespace. In doing so, the book brings power differentials to the centre of language and objectivity debates and foregrounds material semiotics as an approach that enables a new collective potential and redefinition of sociolinguistic listening. By connecting research on scale in migration contexts with studies of embodied soundwork and of stance in semiotics, this book highlights how a focus on the sounded sign may bring us closer to the ways in which bodies and meanings are (re)made, and collective doing and thinking are formed in the globalised world.