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

Abstract

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.