Abstract/Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp focus the power of discourse – especially the discourse of the powerful. More than ever, we need to carefully scrutinise the words and storylines produced by political leaders and other influential social actors. Understanding leadership as a mediated activity performed in situ through discourse, this Article Collection focuses on how powerful political leaders across different geopolitical contexts including Germany, India, New Zealand, South Africa, UK and USA used discourse and media to ‘do’ leadership during the pandemic. The papers in this Article Collection showcase political leadership discourse enacted across a range of media including social media and mass media. Employing a variety of discourse analytical methods and frameworks, they reveal the kinds of discursive strategies that the leaders utilised to enact authority and agency, to win public support, and to present themselves as effective political actors in the context of a global crisis.