Communication Inequality, Structural Inequality, and COVID-19

Abstract

The deep material inequalities in neoliberal political economies across the globe that have been thrown into display by COVID-19 are constituted by and constitutive of entrenched communicative inequalities. Communicative inequalities refer to inequalities within communities, societies, nations, and globally in the distribution of communicative resources, resources for information, and resources for voice. Drawing on the key tenets of the culture-centred approach (CCA) that examine the communicative processes of backgrounding, stigmatisation, minimisation, and erasure, this chapter will attend to the everyday forms of marginalisation that constitute the restructuring of work, livelihood, and resources of health and wellbeing that form the backdrop of the flows of COVID-19. Moreover, the policy responses to COVID-19 will be critically examined, attending to the ways in which these responses work as sites of erasure, often further reproducing the marginalisation of those who are already at the economic margins of neoliberal governmentality. A culture-centred approach to creating communicative equality is suggested, articulating the role of communicative infrastructures for information and voice at the margins in addressing COVID-19.