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Part of
Manufacturing Dissent: Manipulation and counter-manipulation in times of crisis
Edited by Cornelia Ilie
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 339] 2024
► pp. 215–239

Chapter 7
News media’s epistemological framings of the Covid-19 ‘lab leak’ hypothesis

A contrastive metapragmatic analysis of ‘conspiracy theory’

| Ming Chuan University

Despite a continuing lack of conclusive evidence on the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a reassessment of the likelihood of various explanations, including the ‘lab leak’ hypothesis. This chapter analyses selected UK, US, and Chinese media articles’ usage of ‘conspiracy theory’ in relation to the lab leak hypothesis. It argues that the concept’s use was inseparable from local political contexts, as well as mainly metapragmatic: Chinese media’s use of the concept is contradictory under an orthodox definition, while UK/US media explicitly characterize it as a description of certain discourses, rather than indicating the factual likelihood of a hypothesis. The chapter argues that the implication of ‘conspiracy theory’ in metapragmatics makes it particularly vulnerable to (counter-)manipulation strategies.

Keywords: conspiracy theory, metapragmatics, Covid-19, lab leak hypothesis, media discourse, manipulation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background: Geopolitics and the unknown origins of Covid-19
  • 3.Theoretical notions
    • 3.1Orthodox views of ‘conspiracy theory’
    • 3.2‘Conspiracy theory’ and metapragmatics
  • 4.Methodology
  • 5.‘Conspiracy theory’ in news reporting on the lab leak theory
    • 5.1The Global Times: ‘Conspiracy theory’ as a metapragmatic label
    • 5.2The Global Times: Absence of ‘conspiracy theory’ as a description of US lab leak hypotheses
    • 5.3UK/US media: Linking the lab leak hypothesis to specific social groups
    • 5.4UK/US media in 2021: A retrospective, meta-metapragmatic analysis of the lab leak hypothesis as ‘conspiracy theory’
  • 6.Conclusion and implications
  • References
Published online: 17 January 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.339.07des
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