Discursive structures and power relations in Covid-19 knowledge production

The paper addresses why the Covid-19 crisis, a shared global event, produced intense social polarisation, especially on social media, instead of communal consensus. Framing Covid-19 as the first truly global, digitally mediated event, the author argues that social media became the primary public sphere during lockdowns, amplifying linguistic interaction and accelerating epidemic psychology—waves of fear, stigma, moralising, and calls to action. The study proposes to understand pandemic discourse as a real-time process of knowledge production largely occurring online, and to examine the power relations shaping what can be said and who can speak. The purpose is to explain polarisation as predominantly issue-related (interpretative) rather than strictly partisan, and to interrogate how discursive exclusions—particularly appeals to “the science” and accusations of “conspiracy theory”—consolidate hegemonies in knowledge production. The importance lies in offering a critical framework that links language, power, and knowledge in order to better understand and address social divisions in digitally mediated crises.

The article situates its argument within several strands of scholarship: (1) Epidemic psychology (Strong, 1990; Rosenberg, 1989) explains volatile social responses to novel diseases through language-driven processes that disrupt everyday routines. (2) Public sphere and social media research (Papacharissi, 2002; Bruns & Highfield, 2016; Bruns, 2019) debates whether virtual spaces constitute a public sphere, problematising context collapse and perceived polarisation; evidence suggests cross-cutting exposure coexists with misinformation (Tucker et al., 2018). (3) Philosophy and sociology of science (Habermas, 1972; Knorr-Cetina, 1977; 1999) challenge scientism and highlight science as constructive, heterogeneous knowledge practice rather than a monolithic authority. (4) Critical discourse and applied linguistics (Pennycook, 2001; Mills, 2004; Martin & White, 2005) provide tools to analyse ideology, dialogism, and discursive hegemony. (5) Polarisation research distinguishes partisan from issue-related polarisation, showing that knowledge can intensify issue extremity without mapping onto ideology (Lee et al., 2014; Tucker et al., 2018; Kligler-Vilenchik et al., 2020). (6) Studies on science communication and consensus framing (Taylor, 2010; Pérez-González, 2020a, 2020b; Martin et al., 2020) show how “the science” functions rhetorically as ethos, masking scientific plurality. (7) Conspiracy theory discourse (Husting & Orr, 2007; Husting, 2018; Butter, 2018; Vogel, 2018; Wood, 2016) is examined as a metadiscursive tool for sanctioning and exclusion, shaping boundaries of reasonable speech. Collectively, this literature underpins a Foucauldian view of power/knowledge and supports analysing pandemic debates as contested knowledge production.

The study is a conceptual and critical discourse-analytic essay rather than an empirical data-driven investigation. It adopts: (1) Strong’s epidemic psychology to frame early pandemic reactions as language-mediated social processes; (2) a Foucauldian perspective on discourse, power/knowledge, and procedures of exclusion (prohibition, reason/madness, true/false) to interrogate how boundaries of the sayable are set; (3) dialogic theory (Bakhtinian dialogism) and the notion of dialogic contraction from Appraisal Theory and Relational Dialectics to analyse how certain labels and appeals (e.g., “the science,” “conspiracy theory”) centralise some voices and marginalise others; (4) insights from the sociology and philosophy of science (Knorr-Cetina; Habermas) to contest monolithic constructions of scientific authority; and (5) critical applied linguistics to foreground ideology, hegemony, and reflexivity in analyzing knowledge production on social media. The approach proceeds through theoretical argumentation, synthesis of existing research, and illustrative examples from public discourse, aiming to explicate the mechanisms by which discursive structures enforce inclusion/exclusion and drive interpretative polarisation.

• Social media’s always-on commentary intensified epidemic psychology, lowering thresholds for fear, stigma, moralising, and calls to action, and turning pandemic response into a real-time process of communal knowledge production.
• Polarisation around Covid-19 is primarily interpretative and issue-related, not neatly aligned with traditional left–right ideological cleavages; cross-cutting frames and competing contextualisations produced irreconcilable positions.
• Two key discursive structures of exclusion—invocations of “the science” and accusations of “conspiracy theory”—function as strategies of dialogic contraction that centralise authority and marginalise dissent, contributing to monologic discourse.
• “The science” operates rhetorically as an ethos-based appeal to an unspecified authority, obscuring scientific plurality and uncertainty, and enabling hegemonic boundary-setting in public debate.
• “Conspiracy theory” serves as a metadiscursive sanctioning device that reframes interlocutors as unreasonable and shifts attention from claims to the claimant, policing the limits of the sayable and civic belonging.
• Polarisation is not inherent to social media technology; rather, discursive power relations and hegemonic labeling practices within digitally mediated public spheres drive the observed divisions.
• A reflexive, Foucauldian-informed approach that problematises truth claims and recognises the ideological nature of all knowledge production is better suited to analyse and mitigate these dynamics.

By reframing the pandemic as a digitally mediated process of knowledge production, the analysis explains rapid polarisation as an outcome of competing frames and exclusionary discursive practices rather than a simple technological determinism. The findings address the research question—why a shared health crisis led to deep divisions—by showing how epidemic psychology, amplified by social media, interacted with hegemonic appeals to “the science” and stigmatizing labels like “conspiracy theory” to contract dialogue and entrench positions. This interpretative polarisation transcends conventional partisan lines, aligning with literature that distinguishes issue-based dynamics from party ideology. The significance lies in highlighting power/knowledge mechanisms that determine whose voices count, how authority is constructed, and how boundaries of legitimate debate are enforced. Recognising these dynamics suggests that fostering a healthier public sphere requires reflexive discourse practices, transparency about scientific uncertainty and plurality, and analytical strategies that examine power in discourse rather than pathologising individuals or presuming neutral positions outside ideology.

The paper contributes a critical, theoretically grounded account of how social media intensified epidemic psychology and turned Covid-19 into a global, real-time knowledge-production process marked by interpretative polarisation. It identifies two central exclusionary devices—“the science” and “conspiracy theory”—as strategies of dialogic contraction that enforce hegemonic boundaries and undermine inclusive deliberation. The study argues for a Foucauldian, critically reflexive approach to discourse and science communication, aligning with Critical Applied Linguistics and Critical Disinformation Studies, to foreground power relations in knowledge practices. Future research should: (1) build empirically informed, reflexive analyses of online discourse that avoid pre-sorting corpora by value-laden labels; (2) examine how transparency about scientific processes affects public acceptance across identities; (3) compare pandemic knowledge-production dynamics with environmental and climate movements to develop participatory, pluralistic communication practices; and (4) investigate institutional, economic, and platform-level structures that shape discursive power and the limits of the sayable.

The analysis is conceptual and synthesises existing literature rather than presenting systematic empirical data or quantitative measurements; thus, its claims about discursive dynamics are illustrative. The focus on social media discourse may underrepresent offline, non-digital, and Global South contexts, and the heterogeneous experiences of different social groups during the pandemic. The paper does not evaluate the factual accuracy of specific claims nor measure causal impacts of particular labels; instead, it theorises mechanisms of discursive power, leaving empirical testing to future studies.