TY - JOUR
T1 - 'Generic visuals' of Covid-19 in the news
T2 - Invoking banal belonging through symbolic reiteration
AU - Mork Rostvik, Camilla
AU - Kennedy, Helen
AU - Anderson, Chris
AU - Aiello, Giorgia
N1 - The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/T000015/1).
PY - 2022/2/16
Y1 - 2022/2/16
N2 - In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, images of the virus molecule and ‘flatten-the-curve’ line charts were inescapable. There is now a vast visual repertoire of vaccines, people wearing face masks in everyday settings, choropleth maps and both bar and line charts. These ‘generic visuals’ circulate widely in the news media and, however unremarkable, play an important role in representing the crisis in particular ways. We argue that these generic visuals promote banal nationalism, localism and cosmopolitanism in the face of the crisis, and that they do so through the symbolic reiteration of a range of visual resources across news stories. Through an analysis of three major news outlets in the UK, we examine how generic visuals of Covid-19 contribute to these banal visions and versions of belonging and, in doing so, also to foregrounding the role of the state in responding to the crisis.
AB - In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, images of the virus molecule and ‘flatten-the-curve’ line charts were inescapable. There is now a vast visual repertoire of vaccines, people wearing face masks in everyday settings, choropleth maps and both bar and line charts. These ‘generic visuals’ circulate widely in the news media and, however unremarkable, play an important role in representing the crisis in particular ways. We argue that these generic visuals promote banal nationalism, localism and cosmopolitanism in the face of the crisis, and that they do so through the symbolic reiteration of a range of visual resources across news stories. Through an analysis of three major news outlets in the UK, we examine how generic visuals of Covid-19 contribute to these banal visions and versions of belonging and, in doing so, also to foregrounding the role of the state in responding to the crisis.
KW - banal nationalism
KW - Covid-19
KW - data visualisation
KW - generic visuals
KW - news media
KW - symbolic reiteration
KW - stock photography
KW - visual communication
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779211061415
DO - https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779211061415
M3 - Article
JO - International Journal of Cultural Studies
JF - International Journal of Cultural Studies
ER -