About this Research Topic
Like many other infectious diseases in the past, COVID-19 has revealed major health disparities across the world. Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) in the United States and Canada, for example, as well as migrant laborers working in mostly unorganized sectors in the global south, have been disproportionately affected by the virus. Indeed, over the past year, groups and communities on the margins of society have witnessed an unprecedented level of suffering, which has been exacerbated by structural inequities, injustices and unequal social orders.
The severity of the situation and its attendant human suffering, as well as the differential impact created by the virus, call upon us as critical scholars committed to social justice to engage in constructive and transformative dialogue and action to facilitate the changes needed to conceive a more socially just world.
We invite critical scholars, action oriented researchers and practitioners in public health, communication, medicine, nursing, and other cognate fields who are committed to the cause of social justice, equity, and human rights to contribute to a collection of papers intended to interrogate and disrupt the structural inequities that are now even more starkly visible within the context of the pandemic.
Our goal is to compile a collection of papers that will examine how discourses and narratives of risk, causality, vulnerability, inequities, suffering, as well as social and political responses to the virus, are constructed and shaped in different communicative spaces. We aim to cover a wide range of venues, sources and channels, including: news, entertainment and social media; public health and policy domains; non-profit and community-based organizational discourses; professional groups and associations (nurses, doctors, teachers, frontline workers); nursing homes; indigenous, migrant, and communities of color; and small group, family and interpersonal contexts. How do formal and informal discourses in these contexts and their concomitant narratives and frames circulate, collide or converge with each other? How do these discourses contribute to, reveal or ignore the major fault lines of society? What new spaces, opportunities, and discursive practices have emerged in the wake of COVID-19 that could be used to build strategic alliances and partnerships to confront structural inequities, marginality, vulnerability to disease, and to bring about meaningful social change?
We welcome 250-word abstracts for consideration for this Research Topic. Selected abstract authors will be requested to submit complete manuscripts for peer-review, based on the timeline provided.
As noted above, we are seeking submissions from varied disciplinary fields and geographical locations, including the Global South and North. Topics may include, but are by no means limited to:
• mainstream news media framings of health disparities and risk discourse related to COVID-19
• news and stories of increased domestic and family violence, mental health issues and COVID-19
• the role of entertainment media and the entertainment industry: dominant and/or emerging narratives related to COVID-19 and health disparities
• social networking sites and the dominant as well as emerging spaces of discourse related to risks, marginality, vulnerability, suffering, and issues of equity
• public health and policy discourses related to COVID-19
• narratives and discourses among indigenous communities, migrants, and communities of color
• narratives and discourses within the healthcare settings, and on the frontlines, including in hospitals and clinics and among emergency room physicians, nurses, paramedics, and other staff
• ageism, political neglect, and narratives within nursing homes: lessons learnt from COVID-19
• non-profit and community-based organizational discourses related to COVID-19.
The severity of the situation and its attendant human suffering, as well as the differential impact created by the virus, call upon us as critical scholars committed to social justice to engage in constructive and transformative dialogue and action to facilitate the changes needed to conceive a more socially just world.
We invite critical scholars, action oriented researchers and practitioners in public health, communication, medicine, nursing, and other cognate fields who are committed to the cause of social justice, equity, and human rights to contribute to a collection of papers intended to interrogate and disrupt the structural inequities that are now even more starkly visible within the context of the pandemic.
Our goal is to compile a collection of papers that will examine how discourses and narratives of risk, causality, vulnerability, inequities, suffering, as well as social and political responses to the virus, are constructed and shaped in different communicative spaces. We aim to cover a wide range of venues, sources and channels, including: news, entertainment and social media; public health and policy domains; non-profit and community-based organizational discourses; professional groups and associations (nurses, doctors, teachers, frontline workers); nursing homes; indigenous, migrant, and communities of color; and small group, family and interpersonal contexts. How do formal and informal discourses in these contexts and their concomitant narratives and frames circulate, collide or converge with each other? How do these discourses contribute to, reveal or ignore the major fault lines of society? What new spaces, opportunities, and discursive practices have emerged in the wake of COVID-19 that could be used to build strategic alliances and partnerships to confront structural inequities, marginality, vulnerability to disease, and to bring about meaningful social change?
We welcome 250-word abstracts for consideration for this Research Topic. Selected abstract authors will be requested to submit complete manuscripts for peer-review, based on the timeline provided.
As noted above, we are seeking submissions from varied disciplinary fields and geographical locations, including the Global South and North. Topics may include, but are by no means limited to:
• mainstream news media framings of health disparities and risk discourse related to COVID-19
• news and stories of increased domestic and family violence, mental health issues and COVID-19
• the role of entertainment media and the entertainment industry: dominant and/or emerging narratives related to COVID-19 and health disparities
• social networking sites and the dominant as well as emerging spaces of discourse related to risks, marginality, vulnerability, suffering, and issues of equity
• public health and policy discourses related to COVID-19
• narratives and discourses among indigenous communities, migrants, and communities of color
• narratives and discourses within the healthcare settings, and on the frontlines, including in hospitals and clinics and among emergency room physicians, nurses, paramedics, and other staff
• ageism, political neglect, and narratives within nursing homes: lessons learnt from COVID-19
• non-profit and community-based organizational discourses related to COVID-19.
Keywords: Coronavirus/COVID-19, health communication, social justice in health, health disparities, narrative/discourse analysis
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
