COVID-19 and the Political Framing of China,Nationalism,and Borders in the U.S. and South Korean News Media

Abstract

Using an inductive framing analysis of news coverage, we examine how the most popular liberal and conservative news media in the United States and South Korea mobilize different nationalist narratives on China in responding to social, economic, and political upheavals during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. We identify three major areas of political cleavage in both Korean and U.S. media discourse on nationalist identities vis-à-vis the construction of the national or racialized “Other.” This includes (1) imagined solidarity against China as an adversary; (2) political disputes over boundary-making; (3) and the construction of ethnonational belonging and exclusion. Our research underscores how intrastate and interstate shifts during periods of crisis can heighten political cleavages along racial and ethnic fault lines and complicate dominant frameworks of civic and ethnic nationalism in both countries.

Keywords

Asia and Asian America technologies and media sociology global and transnational sociology political sociology pandemic nationalism

History has shown how a global crisis can prompt a wide range of governmental actions, ranging from stringent state-sponsored lockdowns and travel bans to multilateral cooperation and resource-sharing strategies (Thomas 2006; Troy 2010). Public fear and anxiety over the permeability of borders in a globalizing economy can fuel national solidarity and political conflicts both within and across nation-states, thus reinvigorating heated debates over the delineation and reinforcement of national boundaries (Allen et al. 2020; Woods et al. 2020). Amid competing political narratives of nationhood, global crises like COVID-19 have the potential to trigger restrictive forms of nationalism, latent tensions between social groups, and narrow the terms of national belonging along racial and ethnic fault lines (Woods et al. 2020).

The internal political culture of the country is a major force in determining the intensity and dynamics of nationalist conflicts during periods of crisis (Bonikowski and DiMaggio 2016). These divisions are most clearly visible in nations dominated by an ethnic majority and built on ethnocultural concepts of nationhood, such as France and parts of Eastern Europe. But even in civic-oriented democracies and ethnically heterogeneous nations like the United States, Germany, and United Kingdom, the current pandemic has intensified pre-existing political cleavages that were already emerging in the form of right-wing populist movements and leadership prior to the outbreak (Woods et al. 2020). Moreover, external interstate dynamics—especially geopolitical relations among the world’s superpowers—can reconfigure the underlying narratives of nationalism that play out in different countries (Larsen 2017). Against this backdrop, the rapid global outbreak of COVID-19 has underscored how public fear can also be projected onto immigrant and minority groups associated with competing nations and invoke deeply ingrained stereotypes about race, citizenship, and disease on a global scale (see Bieber 2020). This pandemic is significant in precipitating the first major disruption in the hyperglobalized economy by destabilizing key global supply chains with China; it thus provides an opportunity to study how civic and ethnic nationalism is contested and articulated around these shifting global dynamics.

Some of these struggles over race, nationality, citizenship, and belonging are being contested and articulated in the mass media (Garcini et al. 2020). As Robert M. Entman (2007) argues, the media can manipulate reality and slant political content toward a specific perspective by means of framing—or “the process of culling a few elements of perceived reality and assembling narrative that highlights connections among them to prompt a particular interpretation” (p. 164). What is lacking in the current scholarship is a developed analysis on how the liberal and conservative media frame pandemics by assigning blame on other nations, delineating boundaries of ethnocultural, national, and racial belonging, and responding to latent political cleavages that become salient during global crises.

Our research adopts Rogers Brubaker’s (2004, 2009) broader conceptualization of “nationalism” rooted not in any fixed and narrowly defined set of beliefs about nationhood but encompassing a “wide range of attitudes that constitute respondent’s nation-schemata—from love of country and bellicosity toward outsiders to critical engagement with the nation (Bonikowski and DiMaggio 2016: 952).” This paper examines how the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting nationalist crisis has shaped political discourse in two democratic nations with different civic traditions, demographics, and ethnocultural histories—United States and South Korea—with specific attention to how the media draws boundaries in respect to China as the racial and ethnic “Other.” We ask,

As nations enact new trade and immigration policies, how do news media in the United States and South Korea articulate different nationalist narratives on China in the world order during the pandemic?

How do news media in both countries mobilize different frameworks of nationalism to justify their political position on border control within the global economy?

How do the U.S. and Korean news media portray their country’s relations with China in ways that reveal the different racial and ethnonational underpinnings of nationalism in each country?

We conducted an inductive framing analysis based on a random sample of the top liberal and conservative news media in the United States and South Korea (also referred to as “Korea” hereafter) from December 31, 2019, to May 24, 2020. Three themes emerge from this analysis, including (1) imagined solidarity against an adversary; (2) political disputes over boundary-making against undesirable migrants; (3) and the ethnocultural basis for national membership. Our research underscores how shifts in intrastate and interstate dynamics during the crisis can heighten political cleavages along racial and ethnic fault lines and complicate prevailing frameworks of civic and ethnic nationalism in both countries.

Framing Nationhood and Politics in the Media

Nationhood and nationalism are cultural constructs expressed through semiotic, discursive, and institutional practices that cultivate a collective sense of belonging based on abstract allegiance, sentimental attachments, and legal affiliations to a politically and territorially defined nation-state (Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008). As a political ideology, nationalism is a powerful source of social meaning and identity that can potentially galvanize both unity with fellow members as well as hostility against outsiders. Benedict Anderson (2006) conceptualized nation-states as modern creations, composed of members who feel symbolically and emotionally connected with an imagined community of fellow members—most of whom they will never meet yet still share a bond and sense of belonging.

Rooted in the country’s early history of nation-building, Hans Kohn (1967) distinguishes between two categories of nationalism: ethnic nationalism in which members are bonded by a belief in their common heritage based on ancestry, language, and belief systems, and civic nationalism in which solidarity is cultivated through shared liberal values, such as freedom, egalitarianism, and individual rights. One of the underlying assertions in this model is that there is inherently more room to expand boundaries of belonging in civic nations as compared with ethnic-based nations. This is simply because the former binds the diverse members of a polity through elective traits such as common civic values, political traditions, and democratic institutions, while the latter focuses on more fixed, primordial ties built on shared ethnic ancestry, ethnoracial heritage, and a monolithic culture (Larsen 2017; Simonsen and Bonikowski 2020). However, as Anthony D. Smith (1991) contends, “. . . every nationalism contains civic and ethnic elements in varying degrees and different forms. Sometimes civic and territorial elements predominate; at other times it is the ethnic and vernacular components that are emphasized” (Smith 1991, p. 13). Despite some criticism over its conceptual ambiguity, normative overtones, and empirical inaccuracy (e.g., Shulman 2002; Tamir 2019), this conceptual dichotomy can offer useful ideal-type starting points for gauging and comparing the different orientation and historical context for nationalist sentiment across nations, even if they offer less in terms of the specific content of nationhood itself (Reeskens and Hooghe 2010; Simonsen and Bonikowski 2020).

While the fundamental premise of nations as “imagined communities” have gained traction, scholars have critiqued the reification of nations and nationalism implicit in these categorical distinctions and argue for more sophisticated models that take into account the complex politics of multicultural nation-states constituted by citizenship (Wodak 2017). Rather than presuming the fixed, homogeneous nature of ethnic group formation as self-evident units of analysis (Brubaker 2004), the growing scholarship on ethnic boundary-making points to the broader context of political power, institutional structures, and social inequality within which actors struggle over and strategically set the boundaries and terms of group membership (Wimmel 2013). Thus, nationhood itself is a type of social identity that is formed, negotiated, affirmed, reproduced, and dismantled not only through tangible symbols, social interactions, institutional forms, and ritual performances (Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008), but also through elite and vernacular discourse intended “to produce collective identity, to mobilize people for collective projects, and to evaluate people and practices” (Calhoun 1997: 5).

Mass media is one of the most powerful mediums through which nationalism is produced and legitimized as cultural constructions (Anderson 2006). They provide a discursive space in which diverse political perspectives are framed and contested (Street 2001), boundaries of national inclusion and exclusion are drawn (Hariman and Lucaites 2003), and public sentiment is molded around a collectively imagined community of people (Taylor and Gunby 2016). Journalists, political commentators, and news broadcasters function as key cultural intermediaries in packaging large-scale phenomena into simplistic sound bites that frame political debate and give meaning to social reality (Fiss and Hirsch 2005; Norton 2011).

The modern proliferation of media sources and the corporate monopoly of media markets (Chrisman 2008) have increasingly reinforced the fractured and polarized political worldviews of media consumers depending on the news source they consume (Morris 2007). The cultural construction of the “imagined political community” is belied by implicit meaning structures that prime the audience to partisan conclusions and political polarization of media organizations (Morris 2007). Stephen Castles (2011) concludes that given “the populist politicians and mind-numbing mass media, with their joint skills in manipulating the symbols of nationalism and ethnic grievance, and you have some of the ingredients of the backlash against multiculturalism that has characterized the last decade” (p. 23). In this sense, mass media can organize and convey ethnonationalist messages through partisan framing and political boundary-making, as much as they forge national solidarity through imagined communities.

Within this context, scholars and political pundits are debating whether or not a new post-COVID phase in globalization will usher in more drastic and long-lasting changes that will “strengthen the state and reinforce nationalism . . . [and] accelerate the shift in power and influence from West to East”—thus setting the stages for “the end of globalization as we know it” (Allen et al. 2020; Duran 2020). Regardless of their political-economic structure, state authorities have been clamping down on borders, instituting strict migration and trade controls, supervising internal movements and activities, and pouring money into economic stimulus packages to manage the spread of the coronavirus (Allen et al. 2020; Woods et al. 2020). Whether temporary or permanent, these changes have opened the doors for strengthening the nation-state by expanding the administrative and supervisory capacity of the government, restructuring supply chains, and galvanizing populist sentiment (Woods et al. 2020).

The retreat from hyperglobalization—or the drastic increase in the scope, size, and velocity of globalization since the late 1990s (Rodrik 2011)—has also been accompanied by the resurgence of ethnonationalism. The current consensus among political analysts is that by fueling anxiety, disrupting normal routines, and widening social inequality, the global crisis has activated latent ethnic and nationalist divisions from subtle political tensions to more violent confrontations and restructured the world order in ways that are “constitutive, amplifying, or transformative” (Allen et al. 2020; Woods et al. 2020: 13). As nations rebuild in the aftermath of the pandemic, there is a need to examine how the cultural construction of ethnicity and nationhood will play out on a global scale in both civic and ethnic-dominated nations with the renegotiation of immigration and border policies, the decline of U.S. hegemony in the global market, the economic ascendancy of China and other late-industrializing countries, and escalating nationalist sentiment and governmental control (Duran 2020; Rodrik 2020).

Data and Methods

We chose to examine the United States and South Korea because of their comparable democratic two-party political systems but contrasting nationalist cultures. While both are democratic societies, the two countries have been wracked by bitter partisan conflicts between two major conservative and liberal parties under the presidencies of Jae-In Moon (South Korean Democratic Party) and Donald Trump (U.S. Republican Party). Both countries had key party elections in 2020. In addition, while both nations were hit hard by the initial wave of the pandemic in late January, the Korean government was relatively more successful in deploying extensive testing, contact tracing, and safety protocols that rapidly subdued the virus; the United States to this day continues to have among the highest rates in the world because of slow government response, insufficient testing, and medical supply shortage (Brazinsky 2020).

More importantly, public nationalist sentiment in each country falls on opposite sides of the ethnic to civic nationalism spectrum (Larsen 2017). The history and tradition of the United States exhibit many elements of civic nationalism in terms of its liberal ideals of egalitarianism and individualism; republican system of popular sovereignty, and multicultural vision of nationhood stemming from its ethnically heterogeneous population of native and immigrant minorities (Bonikowski and DiMaggio 2016; R. Smith 1997). In contrast, Korean law and society has long embraced ideals of ethnic nationalism rooted in the widely held belief that their members share a common bloodline and unique cultural heritage; the country was closed off to the outside world for a significant part of its modern history but has recently witnessed immigration from China and other Asian countries, North Korean refugees, marriage migrants, and laborers that has rapidly diversified its otherwise homogeneous ethnic population (Seol and Seo 2014).

According to a poll by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (Newman et al. 2020), the top two news sources that respondents relied on to stay informed on COVID-19 were online news and television news. Based on both reader/viewership size and political orientation, we selected the following online newspapers: USA Today (left-leaning) and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ; right-center) in the United States (Infoplease N.d.) and Chosun (conservative) and Hankyoreh (liberal) in Korea (Korea Audit Bureau of Certification 2019). In terms of the leading cable news channels in the United States, Fox News has been ranked as moderate to far right, and MSNBC is considered moderate to far left (AllSides N.d.). We selected JTBC (liberal) and TV Chosun (conservative) as the two most comparable cable news channels in Korea based on the similarities between their viewership and political orientations (Newman et al. 2019).

From the selected sources, we collected journalist news reports as well as other available content including op-eds for newspapers and talk shows (e.g., Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC and Hannity on Fox news) for cable news channels. For the U.S. media, we collected news reports and broadcasting transcripts through the NewsBank database and WSJ websites; for the Korean media, we collected reports from the Naver portal—Korea’s largest news archive. The data collection period spanned from December 31, 2019 (World Health Organization [WHO] announcement of the first reported case) to May 24, 2020 (the date George Floyd was killed by police). We chose this end date because the shooting and consequent movement for Black Lives Matter dramatically shifted the media discourse on race in ways that complicated our subject matter. We used search keywords such as “coronavirus,” “COVID-19,” “Chinese virus,” “China virus,” “Wuhan virus,” and “pandemic” in either the news titles or the news content, in combination with “Asian,” “Chinese,” “Korean,” “migrant,” “immigrant,” and “international student.” The search results generated 876 news reports from the U.S. media and 3,772 news reports for the Korean media as described in Table 1.

Table 1.

Sample Descriptive Analysis.

	U.S.
Total/Sample	USA Today	WSJ	MSNBC	Fox News	Total
Total	101	530	139	106	876
Sample (20%)	20	106	28	21	175
	South Korea
	Hankyoreh	Chosun	JTBC	TV Chosun	Total
Total	994	1,779	544	455	3,772
Sample (20%)	199	356	110	91	756

Note. WSJ = Wall Street Journal.

We used an inductive framing analysis method in which we constructed coding schemes directly from the data based on an in-depth, close reading of the texts (Hsieh and Shannon 2005). This method enabled us to discover frames from a range of possible themes and provide a deeper, contextualized understanding of different media narratives. Following the guidance of Baldwin Van Gorp (2010), we systematically analyzed the collected data through three iterative stages: open coding, axial coding, and theory coding. In the open coding stage, we randomly sampled 20% of the selected media from each country and generated preliminary categories related to our topic. Then, we identified major (sub)themes from each article, while tagging actors, actions and settings, sources, reasoning or causal connections, contrasts or lexical choices as necessary. These preliminary categories were repeatedly compared and contrasted through discussions among the coders in the axial coding stage to generate groupings for these categories as they converged into overarching themes. Finally, these groupings were then compared iteratively until saturation was reached and were integrated into distinct yet coherent themes that represented the phenomenon under study.

Shaping the Political Narrative on China and the Pandemic

The discursive process of producing, maintaining, or contesting nationalist identities and group boundaries can take on a variety of forms, including semiotic and linguistic references, validation of values and traditions, the stigmatization of outgroups, and the construction of historical narratives (Wodak 2017). Through these narratives, one way nationalism derives power and legitimacy is when countries can effectively demonstrate moral righteousness, political and economic strength, and global leadership in opposition to a national adversary (Collins 1999). In the case of COVID-19, the main locus of pandemic discourse has been firmly centered on China and its long-time political and economic rivalry with the United States as global superpowers (Woods et al. 2020).

Depending on the political perspective, this need for economic restructuring may be viewed as an opportunity for the United States to either consider alternative sites for production processes or reassert their leadership in the post-pandemic world order (Duran 2020). For late-industrializing countries like South Korea with developmental ambitions, the pandemic provides opportunities for achieving national recognition in an increasingly competitive global market, especially over China who has competed with Korea over export shares (C.-K. Kim 2020). The media in both countries frame the pandemic in a way that reflects not only their outward geopolitical perspectives on China and the global economy, but also their implicit political support or opposition to governing parties within their respective countries.

Politicizing the U.S.-China Binary

In the U.S. case, the television news channel Fox News consistently promotes a conservative narrative of American exceptionalism that faults the spread of the pandemic on “lame duck” Democratic politicians and uncooperative non-democratic world leaders represented by China. Fox News envisions its work as well as the work of Republican leaders led by President Trump as a valiant effort to reassert the role of the United States as the global leader in the fight against the coronavirus. As Fox News host Sean Hannity from the political commentary program Hannity on Fox News praises,

we Americans, we are the United States, home of the—home of the brave, land of the free, home of the brave, that’s us. We’re already rising to the occasion . . . we won’t be calling a travel ban xenophobic and fearmongering and so on. It’s an invisible enemy. We have to win. There’s no option but to win. (Fox News 3/30)¹

This image of the United States as a powerful nation-state is articulated through a binary framework of Us versus Them—in this case, the racial “Other” embodied in the secretive, corrupt, and insidious caricature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or in the words of Pete Hegseth, Fox and Friends weekend co-host, “an evil, evil communist regime that is hyper ambitious” (Fox News 4/27). Featuring interviews with far-right politicians such as Senators Ted Cruz and Lyndsey Graham, Fox News continuously hammers in the idea that China is to blame for allowing the virus to spread, further enabled by the WHO and Democrats’ obsession with political correctness and Trump’s impeachment. Hannity states,

when you look at China, we could’ve prevented 95 percent of this worldwide. When we learned that they stopped travel from Wuhan province to the rest of China and from the rest of China to Wuhan, but they allowed international travel in and out of Wuhan province, they knew. (Fox News 4/27)

In comparison, the conservative-center newspaper, the WSJ, takes a firm but relatively more diplomatic and global approach in their selective presentation of interviews and articles. With a few exceptions in their op-ed and interviews, the overarching theme consistently focuses on acknowledging the health and economic threat posed by China’s lack of transparency and disrupted supply chains but also advocates a more globally relevant approach in its relations with China beyond the superpower binary reminiscent of the Cold War. Below is a passage from one article:

A rising chorus of American voices now argues that confronting China should become the organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy, akin to the Cold War against the Soviet Union . . . It reflects an out-of-date mind-set that sees dealing with other major powers as America’s principal challenge . . . Even if the U.S. successfully countered China, our security and prosperity could still plummet due to future pandemics, climate change, cyberattacks, terrorism and the spread or even the use of nuclear weapons. (WSJ 5/7)

They warn of economic dependency on a single national source for supplies but also criticize Trump’s isolationist approach and hostility directed at a single nation. Instead, they advocate for international cooperation with multiple nations by arguing that “the only reliable inoculation against future pandemics will be transnational cooperation” (WSJ 3/20) based on the sharing of knowledge; diplomatic pressures against China; and the diversification of supply chains with multiple nations (WSJ 4/28).

Compared with Fox News, the political rhetoric of the sampled broadcasts from the moderate-to-left news channel MSNBC is initially less contentious with the exception of political opinion shows. The Rachel Maddow Show and All in with Chris Hayes increasingly zone in on how Trump’s egregious mishandling of the pandemic has only served to intensify panic and spread misinformation by contradicting scientists, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and his own officials, blaming the media and Democrats for his own failures, and not being prepared with proper medical equipment (MSNBC 2/25, 2/26). Hayes argues that Trump’s preoccupation with China is a smokescreen for his own poor judgment and mismanagement, criticizing that

when you have any kind of public health emergency, any kind of epidemic, what you want is the science leading the politics, not the politics leading science. And, this is so crucial because when you do not get that, you literally get people killed. (MSNBC 2/28a)

While also noting China’s lack of transparency in the early stages of the outbreak, the progressive television news channel draws international parallels between the Trump administration’s own lack of transparency and his “hysterical, irresponsible, demagogue frenzy of panic and fear-mongering” (MSNBC 2/28a) with the authoritarian tactics of leaders in China and Iran. The predominant theme in the news coverage is centered on global interconnectedness and the dependency of the United States on the fate of other countries, even non-allies like China and Iran. On an MSNBC talk show with Chris Matthew, Ben Rhodes former deputy national security advisor suggests that the United States needs to cooperate with other countries if it is to clamp down on the pandemic and its effect on the economy (MSNBC 2/28b).

Korea as the “Dependent” or “Model” Nation

The public health threat and economic toll triggered by the pandemic evokes a similar sense of national crisis and intensifies political strife in the Korean media. The conservative newspaper Chosun adopts a more subtle tone than Fox News but does not hold back in criticizing the Chinese government for manipulating information about the coronavirus in the early stages and shirking responsibility over its role in the outbreak. Like Fox News, they also claim that China utilizes the political support of the allegedly pro-China WHO Director-General (Chosun 2/5) and buys off other countries by sending out medical supply aid—sometimes defective—to build their national reputation (Chosun 4/16). They repeatedly use the term “Wuhan virus” and “Wuhan pneumonia” (e.g., Chosun 1/24, 2/16, 2/20), even after the Moon administration and the WHO recommended that the media refrain from linking the coronavirus to a specific country or region.

Although the conservative media’s framing of China itself does not diverge significantly from liberal news coverage, their views on the country’s relationship with China largely reflect their opposing political views on the incumbent presidential administration. The conservative media Chosun and TV Chosun depict China as a “rogue state” and denounce the weak Korean government for turning a blind eye to China’s unscrupulous cover-up of the outbreak. Chosun also compares the government’s tendency to embellish its successful containment of coronavirus with the corrupt and deceitful actions of China. For example, Chosun editor Chang-Kyun Kim characterizes the Moon administrations’ celebration of mass testing results during the pandemic as premature political posturing and criticizes the government for ignoring the continued suffering and deaths of Koreans throughout the pandemic (Chosun 3/12).

In contrast, the Korean liberal media takes a more ambivalent and guarded approach to news reports related to China. On one hand, JTBC notes that the WHO Director-General is well known for his pro-China stance (JTBC 2/5) and quotes a South Morning Post article on how the Chinese government concealed information on the first coronavirus case in November (JTBC 3/13). Hankyoreh also criticizes China’s lack of transparency, noting that “infectious disease is a problem for humankind. . . . The Chinese government must disclose information with transparency and share it with governments in other countries” (Hankyoreh 1/28). However, this liberal newspaper also cautions that the entry ban on Chinese could trigger anti-Chinese hatred, which would hinder the effective implementation of quarantine procedures. They warn, “we need to listen to expert opinions that discrimination against Chinese citizens and measures such as travel bans would make [Chinese people] reluctant to report symptoms . . . , further worsening the situation” (Hankyoreh 1/28). Furthermore, after a few sporadic references before the late January, the liberal media stops using the term “Wuhan pneumonia” following the Moon administration and WHO guidelines.

The liberal newspaper Hankyoreh frames China as the “Other” and boosts a broader nationalist narrative of Korea as a “model state,” outperforming not only China but Western nations in its swift and effective handling of the pandemic. In one editorial column, the editor-in-chief states that alternatively,

countries and international organizations around the world should try to learn from Korea’s successful quarantine experience. This is because Korea controlled the spread of Corona-19 with open and transparent measures and without a nationwide lockdown or travel restriction . . . Foreign countries marvel at our civic consciousness. (Hankyoreh 4/15)

Moreover, the editorial praises how Korea’s national reputation around the world is being strengthened as Koreans come together to donate masks to medical personnel, support local businesses, and provide rental relief for struggling tenants.

In reaction, both Chosun and TV Chosun denounce the coalition represented by the liberal media and the Korean government as obsessed with their own self-promotion and chauvinism while Korean citizens are still suffering from health complications and casualties because of the pandemic. They argue that praising the Korean model as the “global standard” is not only deceptive but an insult to those who continue to suffer.

The Korean people, who have been fighting COVID-19 for nearly two months, are suffering. However, the ruling party boasts that their national quarantine is “the best on earth,” “world standard,” and an “exemplary model.” [I want to say,] Are those people in their right minds? (Chosun 3/12)

Nationalist Discourse on Border Control

Debates over border control provide clues to analyzing how nations differentiate in-groups from outgroups but also promote different ideals of nationhood. In a forum on politics during COVID-19, Hughes characterizes U.S. and China politicians and media as engaging in a politicized process of “mutual identity construction” where “governing elites use the spectre of the external enemy, or the ‘other,’ to build national identity” or alternatively, provide a positive affirmation of the strong nation-state in effectively triumphing over a global crisis (Woods et al. 2020). These frameworks are not mutually exclusive and essentially represent opposite sides of the same coin. Indeed, both the language and political position of U.S. and Korean liberal and conservative media on travel and immigration restrictions are articulated through different nationalist frames with the United States emphasizing an exclusionary approach to immigration and South Korea under the Moon administration promoting a more inclusive approach.

Racialization of U.S. Border Politics

Although the CDC established the Coronavirus Incident Management System as early as January 7 (U.S. Department of Defense 2020), the United States only started to restrict traveler entry from China after the WHO declared the coronavirus as a public health emergency on January 31 (The White House 2020). The second travel restrictions the United States imposed was on Iran, which took place about a month (February, 29th) after its first suspended entry from China, and the remaining entry suspensions on other countries that had the most significant COVID cases followed around mid-March (U.S. Department of Defense 2020). The slow response of the United States on its border policies is consistent with Trump’s strategy to “downplay” the virus during this period, including inaction on mandating or even recommending face-masks or social distancing (Rutledge 2020).

Fox News feature stories and talk shows demonstrate unequivocal support for Trump’s travel ban through their coverage and quotes of Republican officials. They portray the ban as a near heroic effort of Trump to protect Americans against the virus despite the “hysterical . . . fearmongering” response of Democrats who labeled the ban as “xenophobic” and “racist” (Fox News 3/4, 3/17). Indeed, we found quite a number of references to the moral righteousness and sensibility of Trump’s decision to institute the travel ban during the early stages of the pandemic. Hannity decries,

The far left wants open borders. They accused the president of xenophobia and racism for closing flights back and forth from-to China in January. They don’t believe in borders and it is impossible to stop the pandemic when you believe in open borders without any kind of vetting about who was coming in and out . . . Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats . . . use it [border control] as an opportunity to attack the president while the rest of the country is all hands on deck. (Fox News 3/30)

Fox News insinuates that the initial resistance of “do-nothing” Democrats to the travel ban and their uproar over political correctness epitomizes the weak, ineffective, and divisive nature of liberal politics when in their opinion, all Americans should be united in fighting the pandemic (Fox News 3/4).

While Fox News devotes most of its coverage to China, MSNBC challenges this preoccupation with China, instead recentering its logic on open borders and international cooperation within the larger global context of the pandemic. The liberal news points out that while the ban might have been warranted, this does not help stop the pandemic as it rapidly spreads to other countries. Below is a conversation between Chris Matthew and Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases:

Fauci: We are an interconnected world . . . When you have an infectious agent that can transmit rather readily, anything bad that happens in another country in the global community is going to be even a greater challenge for us . . . The idea that we early on did a travel ban from China and not allow people from China . . . was a very good idea. But as more and more countries get involvement with this as we’re seeing with Italy, as we’re seeing with South Korea, the challenge becomes even greater . . . Matthews: And for us to be prepared for that multiplicity of threats is different than being able to deal with something we thought was just coming from China. (MSNBC 2/28)

Because it is more oriented toward domestic affairs, USA Today takes another approach in explaining the crisis by covering and addressing the anti-immigrant message underlying the travel ban. One article we sampled reported on Trump’s increasing restrictions on different types of immigrants including international students, undocumented workers, and other immigrants—noting briefly the GOP’s reasoning that suspending guest worker visas for international students to increase American jobs as “American students would be forced to compete against international students in a tight job market” (USA Today 5/8a). However, the newspaper also includes counternarratives through a series of feature stories on how immigrants have contributed to the economy during the quarantine. The feature stories cover the lives of different immigrants who are sustaining the economy:

As many of us have hunkered down in our homes, someone else has had to venture out day after day to keep the country fed. To get the food from the farm to our tables, they continue to work—sometimes without the protections we’re told are crucial—to pick the oranges, slaughter the pigs, truck the goods and cook the food so America can continue to eat. (USA Today 5/8b)

Korean Borders as Gauge of National Strength

In contrast to the U.S. government’s travel ban, the Korean government chose instead to adopt an open-border policy in accordance with WHO’s recommendations and also refrained from imposing any strict regulations on trade with China. Following massive overseas and domestic infections, the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced on February 2 that it would temporarily suspend the entry of all foreigners traveling from Hubei, the epicenter of the pandemic. However, instead of extending the travel ban, the Korean government attempted to contain the virus by implementing special immigration procedures and strict quarantine and screening measures. The government required passengers traveling from China to respond to a health questionnaire, get their temperatures checked, report daily symptoms for 14 consecutive days after arrival, and to get tested for the COVID-19. Implementation of such measures was later extended to travelers from other affected countries (Ministry of Health and Welfare 2020).

These open-border policies generated some political backlash as the coronavirus started to spread beyond China. Echoing the sentiment of disgruntled citizens, the conservative newspaper (e.g., Chosun 2/2, 2/26, 3/2) advocated for stricter border control, arguing that the rational decision would have been for the government to close the borders early on. Chosun suggested that the current administration decided to keep borders open to avoid any diplomatic issues during a planned visit of Xi Jinping to Korea in March (Chosun 2/4). Furthermore, the newspaper also criticizes the Moon administration for politicizing a public health crisis in denouncing calls for better safety measures as xenophobic or anti-Chinese (Chosun 2/3), and then suddenly, urging stricter border control measures when it was already too late (Chosun 2/10). Chosun’s editorial board points out how “South Korea has not stopped infected agents from coming from China, the origin and epi-center of the coronavirus, yet China immediately attempted to block Koreans . . . However, we can’t blame China. This is how quarantine should be done” (Chosun 2/26).

In contrast, both Hankyoreh and JTBC clearly refute these claims by the conservative media and contends that entry restrictions only against Chinese would be both xenophobic and unnecessary (Hankyoreh 1/27). According to the liberal newspaper, the Korean government has implemented strong and effective safety measures which have helped contain the virus and that border control, in comparison, would have very little practical effect. In one of their popular programs Fact Check, JTBC also suggests that stricter border regulations would not have been effective in stopping the coronavirus. Instead, it may have the opposite effect of spreading the virus through underground activities like human smuggling, threatening diplomatic relations, and destabilizing the economy (JTBC 1/23).

To liberal news media like Hankyoreh, the border control policy is a key measure for assessing the general strength and competency of a nation. While not necessarily opposing the idea of travel and immigration restrictions, Hankyoreh explains that border control is used only as a last resort when a country is not capable of managing a pandemic through simple quarantine measures. As they assert, “Travel restrictions may delay the spread of the pandemic for a while, but in the end, the key is quarantine” (Hankyoreh 3/30). The idealization of Korea as the “competent state” is reinforced when juxtaposed next to other countries such as Italy that were forced to initiate strict border lockdowns (Hankyoreh 3/10).

The Globalization of the Racial Other

Nationalism can be a source of collective strength and unity as well as a basis for animosity and violence against racial, ethnic, and religious others. Large-scale disruptive events or any drastic change in social conditions can open the doors for reconfiguring ethnocultural boundaries between “us” and “them” and assigning blame to the moral or cultural behaviors of the vilified Other. Against the backdrop of mass anxiety, plummeting economy, and sociopsychological dislocations that accompany global health crises like COVID-19 cultivate the social conditions for rising hostility and assaults against individuals perceived as “foreigners” or “disease carriers,” particularly if they are members of vulnerable racial, ethnic, religious, or immigrant minority groups (Woods et al. 2020). Government and police reports as well as preliminary research show strong evidence that there has been a rise in incidents of racist and xenophobic hostility against both overseas Asians and Asian Americans—from subtle microaggressions to violent assaults (see Bieber 2020).

While certainly more blatant and pervasive in fringe, right-wing extremist media like Breitbart, the analysis of racialized imagery and scapegoating is a bit trickier, subtle, and more complicated when it comes to mainstream media in a multicultural country where “color-blindness,” “meritocracy,” and the “Asian model minority myth” have become the creed of conservative post-Civil Rights racial politics (Bonilla-Silva 2001). However, we gauged the racial logic and political undertones of U.S. and Korean media by analyzing and comparing how the four news media treated incidents of anti-Asian and anti-immigrant assaults against Chinese and Chinese Americans in terms of the selection and amount of coverage, as well as their general tone, rationale, and ideological framework.

The Racial Politics of Anti-Asian Bias

Despite the scarcity of coverage specifically devoted to anti-Asian discrimination and hate crimes, we did find some references to anti-Asian hostility embedded in lengthier articles on such topics as border control, trade protectionism, and nationalism. USA Today provides a sociopsychological and historical perspective on anti-Asian hostility. One of its articles explains how too much social media can stoke fear, including fear of the unknown, which can trigger the type of anti-Asian violence associated with nativist reactionism throughout history. A USA Today national correspondent explains how the stigmatization of Chinese immigrants as “disease carriers” during the pandemic is a product of

fear of deadly contagion [that is] is hard-wired into the American psyche because it has roots in the continent’s invasion first by the Spanish, then the English, both of whom brought diseases that killed millions of Native Americans in Central and North America. (USA Today 2/28)

In an article urging for international cooperation, WSJ points out how excessive nationalism can feed hostility and attacks against Asians and that modern technologies like social media further help breed conspiracy theories and misinformation of all sorts during a pandemic. The foreign-affairs correspondent for the WSJ observes, “racist attacks on Asians, for supposedly being responsible for the virus, have proliferated in Australia and the U.K.” (WSJ 4/17).

The U.S. media also offer some insights into the ways each source navigates the blurry boundaries of anti-China nationalism and anti-Asian bigotry through their discussions on the politics of racialized labeling—specifically the use of the term “Chinese” or “Wuhan virus.” Highly critical of the CCP since the outbreak, the U.S. conservative news channel regularly associates the virus with its origins in China and pushes back against the notion that Trump’s reference to the “Chinese virus” on social media and press briefing is racist and that the expressed concern is merely a partisan ploy by Democrats, the liberal media, and even the CCP to attack Trump to the detriment of Americans (Fox News 3/27). For example, in its attempt to defend the use of “Chinese virus,” Dan Bongino, a guest host Fox News commentator, states that the term is not racist because “China is not a race. It’s a country” (Fox News 3/17). He continues to lament that such a pushback on the use of these terms is a national effort by the Chinese regime to “manipulate the liberal left’s love affair with identity politics” for their own benefit (Fox News 3/17).

The few references to anti-Asian harassment in Fox News are brief and focus on defending President Trump’s comments or suggestively include quotes by public figures (e.g., comedian Bill Maher) who disparage this controversy as partisan preoccupation by liberals with political correctness (Fox News 3/17). On one talk show, Tucker Carlson lambasts the liberal media such as Slate.com and Seattle Times for worrying more about the implications of pandemic anxiety on anti-Asian discrimination than the fact that people are easily passing U.S. customs from other countries that have exploded in infections. He sarcastically concludes, “Identity politics trumped public health and not for the first time. Wokeness is a cult” (Fox News 2/24). Ultimately, the conservative U.S. media champions an oppositional racialized dichotomy between public health and partisan politics, downplays the significance of anti-Asian or xenophobic attacks, and subtly validates the use of racially-provocative labels such as the “Chinese/Wuhan virus.”

Between Transborder Ethnic Solidarity and Ethnic Hierarchy

In contrast to the U.S. media, both the print and television Korean media, regardless of political orientation, provide relatively extensive coverage of anti-Asian assaults, harassment, and crimes in Western countries, framing such incidents as expressions of “discrimination” or “hatred.” TV Chosun warns that as the virus continues to spread across the world, discrimination will spread from Chinese to other Asians, including Koreans and Japanese (TV Chosun 1/31). Chosun and TV Chosun assume a relatively sympathetic tone in their coverage of anti-Chinese attacks, taking care to distinguish between the corruption of the CCP from the will of the Chinese people: “Apparently, there is a common misperception that the coronavirus is a disease that Asians carry. Disease leads to prejudice. Although Chinese authorities must take great responsibility for this, Chinese who are suffering a lot from it are just victims” (Chosun 2/10).

Nor do the Korean newspapers hesitate to turn the spotlight on anti-Chinese discrimination incidents and sentiment in Korea itself. For example, Chosun raises concerns over rising anti-Chinese sentiments in an article about taxi drivers or food delivery service refusing to serve Chinese tourists/residents (e.g., Chosun 1/29). The two conservative news media criticize Koreans for discriminating against Chinese on public transportation, in private businesses, and on the Internet:

Hotels, restaurants and plastic surgery clinics, which are mostly visited by Chinese tourists, post signs like “We don’t accept Chinese customers,” while some taxi drivers refuse Chinese passengers . . . The anti-Chinese sentiment is being shared online with anti-China posters [containing slogans such as “Boycott China Coronavirus”]. (Chosun 1/28)

However, interestingly enough, it appears that their sympathy dissipates whenever the Korean government or the major Democratic party speaks out against anti-Chinese attacks. For example, Chosun argues that liberal politicians such as Seoul Mayor Park, who pledged to help Chinese people in Seoul, unfairly prioritized the needs of Chinese over Koreans who are also suffering during the pandemic (Chosun 2/26).

The liberal online newspaper Hankyoreh published many critical articles about anti-Chinese incidents that were reported in various public spaces and private establishments. Hankyoreh also devotes several articles explaining how fake news about the dining culture and hygiene matters in China have unfairly fueled hatred against the Chinese (Hankyoreh 1/28a, 28b). Hankyoreh does not limit itself to Korean sources, but also takes care to include in-depth interviews with Chinese Koreans and Chinese migrants (Hankyoreh 1/29, 2/4, 3/10). In another article, the newspaper argues that these incidents provide good reasons for supporting “anti-discrimination laws” (Hankyoreh 03/10). Although both the liberal and conservative media express some degree of sympathy for Chinese students, Hankyoreh provides a more thorough coverage that incorporates the personalized narratives of Chinese victims and advocates more strongly for specific legislative reforms to address institutional discrimination in Korean society.

Discussion

Table 2 illustrates the diverse ways in which civic and ethnic nationalist values are expressed and articulated in the U.S. and Korean media discourse on China and those of Chinese ancestry during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that the various media frameworks are differentiated by their intrastate (internal) and interstate (global) logic as well as their idealization of nationhood as strong states or diplomatic states. These are only ideal-type categories that do not take into account the ideological overlaps and conceptual blurriness or the diverse set of issues and perspectives represented in the news coverage of each media.

Table 2.

Framing of Nationalism in U.S. and South Korean Media, 2020.

Type	Intrastate logic	Interstate logic
U.S. (civic nationalism)
Strong state	Fox News—populist nationalism	WSJ—global neoliberalism
Diplomatic state	USA Today—multicultural nationalism	MSNBC—multilateral nationalism
South Korea (ethnic nationalism)
Strong state	Chosun and TV Chosun—hierarchical ethnonationalism	Chosun and TV Chosun—dependent state nationalism
Diplomatic state	Hankyoreh and JTBC—transborder nationalism	Hankyoreh and JTBC—model state nationalism

Note. WSJ = Wall Street Journal.

Although the partisanship of the media toward the incumbent administration plays a defining role in both U.S. and Korean media, the range, tone, and substance of U.S. and Korean nationalism depend on how they negotiate their ethnic and civic nationalist frameworks with internal political processes and external globalization pressures. Building on a long, complicated history of slavery, segregation, global restructuring, and immigration, American nationalist frameworks are fractured not only along partisan party lines but also, deeper conflicts around the shifting meaning of race, citizenship, and nationhood as they seek to reposition themselves as a global superpower against China (Woods et al. 2020). In contrast, South Korea is a late-industrializing country seeking global recognition for its social and scientific achievements but also, wrestling with the resulting opening of borders to so-called “ambiguous outsiders,” whose heterogeneity challenges traditional Korean concepts of ethnic-based nationhood (Seol and Seo 2014).

In the literature, populist nationalism advocates strongly for closed borders, trade protectionism, and an ethnocultural view of citizenship that largely excludes immigrants and other minority groups (Bonikowski and DiMaggio 2016; Wodak 2017). Using a strong state approach based on American exceptionalism, Fox News argues that the United States can lead the world in fighting the pandemic and calls on patriots to support Trump against the divisive voices of American liberals, race-baiting minorities, and the anti-democratic Chinese regime who are impeding on America’s potential greatness. Alternatively, intrastate logics based on the diplomatic state model (USA Today) supports a broader, inclusive stance on immigration to nurture a rich, diverse American political culture and strong domestic economy. This form of multicultural nationalism signifies a more modern outlook on civic nationalism that promotes an inclusive and pro-diversity model of civic membership and belonging alongside moderate border policies and a majoritarian view of the nation-state (Modood 2018).

The strong state model based on the interstate logic (WSJ) embraces global neoliberal policies as a means to maintain the country’s unilateral dominance in the world economy. This form of global neoliberalism nationalism views the nation-state’s dominance in world politics and economy as contingent on decentralizing markets, opening up borders and trade, and boosting privatization and governmental deregulation (Harmes 2012). Alternatively, news media focused on the interstate model and the diplomatic state approach (MSNBC) advocate for international cooperation on health, political, and economic matters to build an effective, egalitarian, and humanitarian response to global issues such as the pandemic. Multilateral nationalism on the global scale substantiates the claims of political analysts that a strong nation-state is not incompatible with international cooperation, especially as the economic, social, and political fate of nations become increasingly intertwined by global markets, universal norms and challenges (e.g., human rights, climate change), transnational migration, and international institutions (Rodrik 2020).

On the other hand, the Korean media we analyzed responds to globalization pressures through two underlying narratives of ethnic nationalism: The nationalist framework of both Chosun and TV Chosun is based on a more conservative strong state model that incorporates ethnic and national outsiders around a hierarchical understanding of Korean nationhood. In terms of its interstate logic, the conservative media highlights the inability of the governing party to protect the welfare of resident Korean citizens because of their preoccupation with maintaining global standing and diplomatic relations with China. Within this framework, hierarchical nationalism

tolerates internal diversity and allows for political and civil rights that are defined by the global human rights regime but establishes a hierarchy of the “nationness” of each group by visible and invisible ordering through legal and social rights or popular perceptions. (Seol and Seo 2014: 10).

Alternatively, the liberal diplomatic state nationalism promotes a broader, more inclusive definition of ethnic nationalism and nationhood that under the proper conditions can transcend territorial, ethnic, and national boundaries as a means to promote South Korea’s global strength and stature (JTBC and Hankyoreh) (Schwak 2016). Supporting the current administration’s efforts to attain global recognition, the liberal media portrays South Korea as the “model nation-state” in its handling of the pandemic through open-border policies and strong state control over domestic activities. By including both diasporic Koreans and Asians abroad, we expand on Jaeeun Kim’s (2016) term “transborder membership politics”—or “political claims, institutionalized practices, and discursive representations oriented to or generated by those who have durably resided outside the territory of the state, yet are perceived as belonging to that state or to the nation associated with that state” (p. 8).

Although laden with contradictions, liberal and conservative nationalist frameworks in Korea exhibit elements of both traditional ethnic nationalism originating in perceived common bloodline and culture, as well as flexible views of nationhood that transcend ethnic kinship. However, this also means that the media classifications in this study may also change, depending on the issue of interest, geopolitical relationships, and broader political conditions. For example, the media’s narrative on transborder/hierarchical and dependent/model state nationalism could also shift in rhetoric with transitions in national leadership or topic of interest, such as Korean comfort women under Japanese colonialism or U.S. armed forces in South Korea.

Conclusion

The contentious public debate over how best to handle the global health crisis caused by COVID-19 reveal how opposing political visions of the nation play a crucial role in shaping the selective media rhetoric and coverage in both the United States and Korea. Although explaining some of the underlying dynamics of political conflict in different countries, the civic versus ethnic nationalist binary oversimplifies the salience of shared values versus shared ethnic ancestry and fails to capture the latent nationalist cleavages that divide both ethnically homogeneous and multicultural nations, especially during periods of crisis. The case of United States and South Korea also reveal how discursive political conflicts on nationalist identity construction reflect latent struggles over domestic party politics, emerging far-right populism, and internal demographic changes, but also outward efforts at geopolitical positioning within the post-pandemic world order.

We acknowledge several limitations in our study. Future research can expand the scope of the analysis beyond the 20% we randomly selected to get a fuller image of each thematic category and develop other themes. For example, there are indications that both the U.S. and Korean news media, but especially conservative sources, expressed heightened concern over their country’s economic dependency on global trade, especially China, during the time frame studied. Second, this research used two case studies to uncover the interplay between politics and media presentation during the early stages of the global health crisis, but that discourse may evolve as the pandemic progresses and may uncover whether we are indeed a new stage in nationalism and globalization. Future research could also compare and explore in greater depth the evolution of nationalist narratives before COVID-19, such as the avian flu, Ebola virus, and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which broke out under different partisan administrations.

Without a doubt, the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically damaged the social, political, and economic fabric of both developing and developed countries and opened the doors, if only temporarily, to alternative visions of the nation in the evolving global systems; it is less clear, however, which of these structural changes are permanent, if hyperglobalization will dissipate to more moderate global relations, and which nation or nations will emerge as model nations or leaders in this new post-pandemic world order. The key to containing and preventing the pandemic may lie in better coordinating regional and international cooperation, improving global health regulations and the international activities of global advisory bodies, and mitigating the effects of social inequality in future nation-building projects.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the editors and blind reviewers of Sociological Perspectives for providing feedback on the draft version of the manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Ji-won Lee

Notes

Author Biographies

Angie Y. Chung is professor of sociology at the University at Albany and author of Saving Face and Legacies of Struggle. Her areas of specialization include ethnic politics, interethnic coalitions, gender and immigrant families, ethnic enclaves, and international education.

Hyerim Jo is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication at the University at Albany. Using quantitative research methods including text mining, her research focuses on the media presentation of and public discourse on science- and health-related topics and their effects.

Ji-won Lee is a PhD candidate of sociology at the University at Albany. His areas of interest include political sociology, economic sociology, educational policy, the welfare state, racial-ethnic politics focusing on Asian communities.

Fan Yang is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University at Albany. Using classic (e.g., survey and experiment) and advanced quantitative research methods (e.g., social network analysis, sentiment analysis), her research examines racial discrimination and online social support to marginalized populations such as racial minorities and patients with stigmatized diseases.

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