Mass Political Discourse During the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Critical Discourse Analysis Approach

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated already growing trends in authoritarian-directed disinformation in mass media and social media, specifically complicating public health initiatives to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus and generally affirming the potentially toxic "post-truth" paradigms of the social media era. This pandemic provides an opportunity for observing counterproductive discourses from governing leaders to explore how to address the use of weaponised language by authoritarian and populist figures. As a result, this paper presents a critical discourse analysis of statements made by governing leaders regarding the COVID-19 pandemic using the framework of weaponized language by Pascale (2019). An analysis of counterproductive and productive discourses indicates that resonating statements by leaders are generally rooted in mundane discourses, or that which is assumed as common sense or taken for granted by audiences, suggesting that productive public health discourse must assume a similar footing to combat disinformation and ensure public health.