Relational counterpublics: Media discourses on the COVID Delta variant surge in India

2025/04/28 by Rianka Roy, Bandana Purkayastha, Shoma Choudhury Lahiri +2 · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Populism, Right-Wing Movements #South Asian Cinema and Culture #Social Media and Politics

paper · doi:10.1177/00113921251337088

openalex publication_date 2025/04/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22

Abstract

This article analyzes 2135 news reports published in four languages in India and the United States about the COVID Delta variant surge in India in 2021. We theorize how the dominant and alternate or counter media discourses, in varying structural and political contexts, emerged as ‘relational counterpublics’. Influenced by scholarly decolonial conversations critical of methodological nationalism, we examine pandemic media discourses in their global, transnational, and local manifestations, and the relationality of dominant and more localized discourses to trace the contours of power manifested in them.

Citations

• Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm
• Rethinking the Black Public Sphere: An Alternative Vocabulary for Multiple Public Spheres
• Political Communication in Media Society: Does Democracy Still Enjoy an Epistemic Dimension? The Impact of Normative Theory on Empirical Research
• The public sphere as a dynamic network
• Discourse, framing and narrative: three ways of doing critical, interpretive policy analysis

Discussions

• 🔓 Free to read until January 1st: ▫️Roy, R., Purkayastha, B., Choudhury Lahiri, S., Rajak, D., & Ebenezer, D. (2025). Relational counterpublics: Media discourses on the COVID Delta variant surge in [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]