Narrative Geographies of the Coronavirus: Cultural Interdependencies and the Emergence of New Assemblages

Abstract

The production and consumption of media narratives are geographically and culturally situated phenomena, as is the act of reading and interpreting scientific information. This chapter examines the ways in which contextual factors influence the construction and reception of narratives and emergence of new geographic assemblages amidst the global health crisis of the coronavirus pandemic, which may differ considerably from more conventional scale groupings. Based on semi-structured qualitative interviews with 27 media professionals and scholars in 24 countries, the study identifies patterns of countries attuned to similar “narrative frequencies” based on their reception of dominant and counter-narratives surrounding the novel coronavirus. The project focuses on the relational dimensions of knowledge reception: questions of institutional trust and vulnerability to malicious or conspiratorial narratives; the colonization of the pandemic to reassert or reinforce dominant power structures in relation to migrant labor and refugee populations and the ways in which pre-existing cultural and political relationships with neighboring countries and dominant powers highlight the porosity of territorial boundaries and delineate new geographies of mediated meaning-making and sociospatial consciousness.