The two-way Othering during the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of political statement and media

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has seen increased instances of race-related hate crimes in the U.K., both offline and on the internet. On the other hand, at the beginning of the pandemic, Othering has also been used as a political tool to shift the blame to the Chinese-other. Lacan distinguishes between the other (another person that the self faces) and the Other (a thing which is ontologically distinct from both the self and the other). In Lacanian terms, the Chinese-other is the other, whereas the virus itself is the Other. To study how political statements using Othering and scapegoating tactics affect how the group see the other, this paper examines news and social media sentiment and Google search trends in the U.K., as well as Weibo posts in China, before and during the first four months of the pandemic. The results suggest that the Othering process not only exists in the U.K. but also in China, where the Western-other is reduced to the symbol of a ‘racist’. However, to counter the effect of being Othered, the Chinese government has proactively used the media to emphasise the image of the virus as the Other.