International Journal of Communication Publishes a Special Section on Intermediated Communication via Social Media Platforms During the COVID-19 Pandemic

As more time passes from the rapid and chaotic onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic, some fundamental questions remain about the short and long-term impacts of this crisis on our mental and physical well-being, as well as the dynamic forms of communication practices many of us adopted as a basic survival strategy.    

Guest-edited by Dingkun Wang (University of Hong Kong) and Brian Yecies (University of Wollongong), this Special Section on Intermediated Communication via Social Media Platforms During the COVID-19 Pandemic instigates new perspectives on “citizen” journalism, distributed trust, strategies for navigating misinformation and disinformation, the creation of short-form episodic content, and parasocial intimacy in the Webtooniverse—as diverse responses to one of the biggest crises in our lifetime. Combined, the articles interrogate how various acts of intermediation spread novel forms of digital interaction and integration among different audiences and online infrastructures. The authors’ findings contribute to a growing discourse about how intermediated communications via online and mobile social media platforms have engaged with and overcome challenges at the fundamental core of human communication.  

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed our lives in ways we have yet to fully understand. While a lot of the intense anxiety and extreme health provocations that the pandemic inspired may have subsided, the world remains challenged by the impact of this crisis on our mediated lives. In particular, our varied engagement with the online and mobile world has exposed nuanced pathways for knowledge sharing today, as well as future research on how individual and collective actions may continue to transform digital environments and everyday lived realities more broadly. 

This Special Section explores some of the previously unrecognized ways the pandemic has altered how we consume and synthesize information, create content, and participate and support each other in digital spaces. By applying a range of research methods and tools, including ethnography, qualitative analysis, and big-data emotion detection techniques, the contributing authors delve into significant individual and participatory domains of social media communication. Together, the articles underpin intricate modes of human agency and digital intermediation which have increased in momentum during and since the times of lockdown and the spread of misinformation, as well as the resulting flows of connection, disconnection, and reconnection. Looking forward, it is hoped the research in this Special Section will pave the way for a new generation of scholars and future investigations into how communication practices across digital environments transform in the face of cascading crises. 

We invite you to read these articles that are published in the International Journal of Communication. Please  Ctrl+Click on the article titles below for direct linking to the papers of interest. 

Intermediated Communication via Social Media Platforms During the COVID-19 Pandemic—Editorial Introduction
Dingkun Wang, Brian Yecies

The Homophobic Call-Outs of COVID-19: Spurring and Spreading Angry Attention from Girregi Journalism Online to YouTube in South Korea
Jin Lee, Jeehyun Jenny Lee

The Construction of Distributed Trust on Bilibili Under the COVID-19 Pandemic
Siwen Lu, Sijing Lu

Citizens’ Strategies for Navigating News and Misinformation in the COVID-19 “Infodemic”
Kate Holland, Sora Park, Kerry McCallum, Emma John, Caroline Fisher, Kieran McGuinness, Jee Young Lee

(Mis-)Connected: Web Series, Digital Culture, and Everyday Life in Lockdown
Nicola Evans, Mark David Ryan, Steinar Ellingsen, Meredith Burkholder, Leandro da Silva

Communicating Through Chaos in the Webtoon Parasocial Intimacy Chamber
Dingkun Wang, Brian Yecies, Mehrdad Amirghasemi, Kishan Kariippanon, Ming Lu

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Silvio Waisbord, Editor
Kady Bell-Garcia, Managing Editor
Chi Zhang, Managing Editor, Special Sections
Mark Mangoba-Agustin, Webmaster
Dingkun Wang and Brian Yecies , Guest Editors

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