COVID-19 and the Chinese community in London

Abstract Drawing on findings from ten interviews conducted in 2021, this study examines how members of the British Chinese community in London accessed and interpreted COVID-19 pandemic information, the barriers they encountered in institutional health communication, and the shifting meanings of health artefacts. The findings reveal that transnational information flows created both protective advantages and confusion, that communicative inequalities were frequent during the pandemic, and that the semiotic meanings of key health artefacts became politicised and racialised. The analysis makes use of what we propose as an integrative discourse analysis , which examines data using concepts from several theoretical frameworks.