Coronavirus, Crisis and Culture

This volume represents a timely and essential contribution for both scholars and readers of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Whereas the bulk of literary, academic, and investigative coverage of the Pandemic has focussed on factors such as i) maintaining social cohesion, ii) developing a vaccine, iii) fighting fake news, this submission explores the erosion of civil liberties and human rights during the pandemic, the increase of policing and supervisory practices, and the innovative ways in which contemporary social movements have expressed their concerns at the measures governments have put in place.
The volume challenges restrictions placed on freedom of speech, in which contrary opinions to mainstream public discourse have been branded as fake news, disinformation, or conspiratorial. It questions the legitimacy of authoritative voices such as the BBC with regards to the regurgitation of political dogma and the profound lack of investigative reportage therein. The volume examines how new or conventional social movements have responded to the pandemic and how fundamental human and civil rights such as those campaigned for by Black Lives Matter has united people from different backgrounds.

Stuart Price is Professor of Media and Political Discourse at De Montfort University.
Ben Harbisher is a senior lecturer at De Montfort University, Leicester.

Introduction: Public Policy, Protest and COVID-19
Ben Harbisher
Chapter 1: The Free Press under Attack: Police Attacks on theMedia at the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter Protests during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Rhon Teruelle
Chapter 2: The Bureaucratisation of Civil Disobedience: What Looks Like Order and What Looks Like Anarchy?
Simon Stevens
Chapter 3: Grassroots Mobilisation against the Politics of Hate: The Case of Sardine in Italy
Emiliana De Blasio and Donatella Selva
Chapter 4: Reigniting a Violent Protest Wave: How the Backlash to the Black Lives Matter Movement and COVID-19 Restrictions Accelerated Radicalisation in a Far-Right Extremist/Antifascist Protest Wave in Portland, Oregon
Leanne C. Serbulo
Chapter 5: The Death of a Movement?: COVID-19 and the Anti-CAA Protests in India
Juhi Jotwani and Shubhda Arora
Chapter 6: When Urban Spaces Sleep, Virtual Activities and Protests Emerge through Social Media: The Cultural Sector in Spain during the COVID-19 Mandatory Lockdown
Jennif