Fear Appeals, Migration and Sinophobia in COVID-19 News and Twitter Discourse: A Corpus-based Critical Analysis

During the pandemic period, xenophobic and racist hate speech against migrant communities seeped in everyday online and offline conversations, yet its connection to the wider communicative context of crisis communication has been scarcely investigated so far. Hence, while the morbidity and mortality rates of the COVID-19 virus seem to have subsided, the ways in which COVID-19 risks and measures were communicated and appraised still call for our attention as they illuminate how alternative discursive paths contributed to social division and/or solidarity (see e.g., Muñoz Martínez, 2021; Nguyet Erni & Striphas, 2022; Wodak, 2022). Keeping in mind that the COVID-19 pandemic was and remains so overwhelming because it refers to a series of superimposed social, cultural, political crises, the article attempts to investigate whether it is possible to conceptualize hate speech as a predictable maladaptive reaction to linguistic and discursive discrimination and inequality in the communication of risk (Russo, 2020; Russo & Grasso, 2022). It provides findings on the appraisal of COVID-19 news-based risk communication discourse by Twitter users based in the United Kingdom during the period 1 March 2020-15 March 2020. More specifically, it focuses on maladaptive responses such as hate speech towards migrant communities and individuals with some specific findings on sinophobia. In order to investigate the affect and discrimination nexus which lies at the basis of racist and xenophobic hate speech, it adopts a combined Corpusbased Critical Discourse Studies and Appraisal Linguistics Approach to Social Media (Baker, 2006; KhosraviNik, 2014, 2017; Martin & White, 2005; Partington, 1998; Thomson & White, 2008; Zappavigna, 2012, 2018). The analysis is therefore narrowed from bulk data retrieval to identify the lexical and grammatical resources used to express attitude oriented to affect and associates the findings on affect with the analysis of the representation of social actors from a Critical Discourse point of view (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001; van Leeuwen, 1996; Wodak et al., 1999).