Stefania Milan on COVID-19 Narratives From the Margins

CMDS Fellow Stefania Milan co-authored a theoretical paper on voicing systematically marginalized communities in the COVID-19 pandemic, published in the German edition of Global Media Journal.

In the paper, Milan and co-authors Silvia Masiero and Emiliano Treré establish a theoretical apparatus to conceptualize COVID-19 stories from the margins. Then they apply the apparatus to five problems: counting in the pandemic, new inequalities and vulnerabilities, datafied social protection, data injustices, and solidarity and resistance from below. In doing so, the paper responds to the call for cosmopolitanism in media and communications, leveraging a cosmopolitan view to amplify stories of COVID-19 from the margins. The paper is illustrated with case studies that featured in the co-edited COVID-19 from the Margins project, aimed at narrating, through multilingual author voices, the untold stories of the pandemic.

The paper reflects on processes of datafication from the margins, an issue highly relevant for the transforming field of communication and media studies. It argues that "the increasing role that processes of data extraction and analysis are playing in almost every aspect of human activity makes it often impossible to distinguish between media dynamics and data flows." The paper aims to contribute to the revision of the field’s boundaries.