Dreading the dragon: Health communication and Sinophobic visual metaphors in global COVID-19 cartoons

This study examines how political cartoons worldwide employed Chinese dragon trope during the COVID-19 pandemic to propagate Sinophobic narrative and assesses the ramifications for public health communication and the proliferation of misinformation.A qualitative multimodal discourse analysis was conducted on 15 purposively selected editorial cartoons (Jan 2020-Dec 2023) from international media.Each cartoon was coded for visual frames between Chinese dragon and COVID-19, using established metaphor frameworks.Cartoons were sourced from public archives, attributed, and analyzed under fair use for scholarly critique.Five dominant metaphors were identified: Dragon as Virus, Dragon as Transmitter, Dragon as Aggressor, Dragon as Negligent Entity, and Dragon as Threat.Each frame visually encoded blame and fear, recasting a cultural symbol into a villain.These frames reflect wider xenophobic narratives and may result in undermining public health messaging grounded in evidence.This analysis demonstrates how visual metaphors fueled Sinophobia during the COVID-19 infodemic, undermining crisis communication by spreading stigma and misinformation.To counter this, visual metaphors in public health messaging must be inclusive and culturally sensitive.