A Multimodal Analysis of Japan’s Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

With more than 20 million infections worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the world’s health care system and various sectors of the economy. Previous studies on the pandemic have focused on finding a cure but with little attention to multimodal studies related to the pandemic. This study conducts a multimodal analysis of Japan’s response to the pandemic with a view to scrutinising various modes utilised by Japan to address the threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Kress and van Leeuwen’s Multimodality theory was used to analyse different COVID-19 news complied on Greg Lam’s YouTube channel “Life where I’m from”. Language, visuals and audio-visuals were the dominant modes observed in the Japanese COVID-19 discourse. These modes elicited different responses from the Japanese government, media, health workers and the general populace. These responses are proactive measures, communication of COVID-19 preventive measures and a criticism of certain lapses. Language and visuals were used by the Japanese government to take proactive measures, visuals and audio-visuals were used to disseminate COVID-19 preventive measures while language and visuals were used to criticise certain lapses. Findings from this study will generate outstanding responses towards managing emergencies such as disease outbreaks in future.