Report: ‘Face of the virus’
besea.n conducted a study into representation of ESEA people in UK news coverage of COVID-19 in 2020. The resultant report is available below.
‘Face of the virus’: Problematic over-representation of East and South East Asian faces in news coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic
Image: PA
Since the beginning of 2020, when news coverage of COVID-19 began, those in ESEA communities noticed a disturbing trend. They saw that their faces were being used as stock photos in news articles about the pandemic, including in scenes of everyday life where other faces could easily have been used. Whilst under-represented in most sectors of industry, politics and media, when it came to talking about the virus and the crisis that followed, it seemed that ESEA faces were repeatedly shown as if they were a representation of the virus itself.
Along with harmful rhetoric by some politicians, this over-representation of ESEA imagery associated with the pandemic contributes to the scapegoating of ESEA people as disease carriers. In the same period, hate crime towards those racialised as ESEA skyrocketed globally.
In response to this situation, volunteers at besea.n examined how ESEA people were visually portrayed in news coverage related to the pandemic.
