Populist Discourses on COVID-19 in the Global South (POP-DISC)

南半球国家关于 COVID-19 的民粹主义话语 (POP-DISC)

• 批准号: 468150990
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Sandra Destradi
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: GIGA Institut für Asien-Studien
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2020-12-31 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/468150990?language=en
• 关键词: Populist; Discourses; COVID; 19; Global

Populism appears to have substantial implications in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, both in terms of undermining the fight against the pandemic through appeals to ‘common sense’ against ‘elitist’ expert knowledge, and with regards to a weakening of democratic institutions in the name of crisis management for the ‘people’ (‘pandemic backsliding’). In the deeply divided societies of several countries of the Global South, these effects of populism can be expected to be particularly detrimental. Yet, we actually see a high degree of variation in populists’ approaches to the pandemic.The proposed project (POP-DISC) aims to make a first contribution towards a theorization and systematic empirical analysis of the impact of populism in the context of COVID-19. It does so by focusing on populist discourses on the pandemic, asking the following questions: RQ1: Which narratives shape the official discourse on the pandemic in countries governed by populists?RQ2: How are these narratives received, reproduced or contested by the wider public, including on social media? The main assumption underlying POP-DISC is that the way in which governments communicate about the pandemic with the public plays a fundamental role in the implementation of policies aimed at limiting the spread of the virus. Convincingly framing state responses to COVID-19 as a common battle of the ‘people’ against the virus might help the implementation of such policies, while discrediting science would obviously undermine them (Lasco 2020; Painter and Qiu 2020). At the same time, populist discourses on the pandemic, for example entailing the stigmatization of minorities excluded from the ‘true people’, can exacerbate societal divisions and underscore ‘pandemic backsliding’. If we want to understand the impact of populism in the context of COVID-19, we therefore need to study populist discourses on the pandemic in the first place.POP-DISC takes a theory-led explorative approach, assessing to what extent the constitutive elements of populism (anti-elitism and people-centrism, involving an often exclusionary definition of the ‘people’) are reflected in discourses on the pandemic. The empirical analysis will focus on five countries in different regions of the Global South with populist governments: Brazil, India, Israel, Mexico, and Turkey.POP-DISC will analyse both official government narratives on the pandemic as well as the reception, reproduction or contestation of such narratives among the larger public, with a particular focus on social media and chat apps. A team of local early career scholars in the five countries has been selected with the help of local partners. The team can start working on data collection and analysis (including in local languages) at short notice. Short-lived data from social media and chat apps need to be secured as the pandemic is ongoing, if we want to reconstruct the impact of populist discourse on the pandemic.

民粹主义似乎在 COVID-19 大流行的背景下产生了重大影响，既通过诉诸“常识”对抗“精英”专家知识来破坏抗击大流行的斗争，又削弱了民主制度在南半球一些国家的严重分裂的社会中，民粹主义的这些影响预计将特别有害，但我们实际上看到了严重程度。拟议的项目 (POP-DISC) 旨在对 COVID-19 背景下的民粹主义影响进行理论化和系统实证分析。 RQ1：在民粹主义者统治的国家中，哪些叙述塑造了有关这一流行病的官方话语？ RQ2：更广泛的公众如何接受、复制或质疑这些叙述，包括关于POP-DISC 的主要假设是，政府与公众就这一流行病进行沟通的方式在实施旨在限制病毒传播的政策方面发挥着基础性作用，令人信服地制定国家应对 COVID-19 的措施。因为“人民”与病毒的共同战斗可能有助于此类政策的实施，而抹黑科学显然会破坏这些政策（Lasco 2020；Painter and Qiu 2020）。例如，对被排除在“真正的人民”之外的少数群体进行污名化，可能会加剧社会分歧并强调“流行病倒退”。因此，如果我们想了解民粹主义在 COVID-19 背景下的影响，我们需要这样做。首先要研究关于流行病的民粹主义话语。POP-DISC采取理论主导的探索性方法，评估民粹主义的构成要素（反精英主义和实证分析将重点关注南半球不同地区的五个拥有民粹主义政府的国家：巴西、印度、以色列、墨西哥。 Turkey.POP-DISC 将分析政府对这一流行病的官方叙述以及广大公众对此类叙述的接受、复制或争论，特别关注社交媒体和聊天应用程序。在五个国家在当地合作伙伴的帮助下，该团队可以立即开始进行数据收集和分析（包括使用当地语言），因为疫情仍在持续，因此需要保护来自社交媒体和聊天应用程序的短期数据，如果我们想重建民粹主义话语对这一流行病的影响。