Frontline heroes: Bush fires, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and the Queensland Press

Abstract

During the catastrophic 2019 and 2020 bushfire season and the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020, Queensland’s Courier Mail regularly celebrated firefighters and health workers as national archetypes. By positioning them as the ‘new Anzacs’, the Courier Mail was able to communicate an understanding of the crises using a rhetoric that was familiar, unthreatening and reassuring. The firefighters, both professional and volunteer, were easily subsumed into the mythology’s celebration of national identity. As Queensland’s health workers were predominantly female, urban-based and educated, the article used a more modern iteration of the Anzac mythology better suited to this different context. The emergence of a ‘kinder, gentler Anzac’ in the 1970s and its focus on trauma, suffering and empathy proved equally useful as a rhetorical tool. Both approaches were underpinned by a move away from a narrow military context to the Anzac mythology’s standing as a civic religion that celebrates more universal values such as courage, endurance, sacrifice and comradeship.

Who works on the ‘frontline’? comparing constructions of ‘frontline’ work before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“…Our study therefore contributes to our understanding of how ‘frontline’ work was constructed in the media during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the media participates in the social construction of identity ( Van Dijk, 1991 ; Fairclough, 1992 ; De Camargo and Whiley, 2020 ), the present research is important in understanding how hierarchical constructions of employment were produced and reinscribed as the pandemic progressed, extending previous research in this area ( Kerby et al., 2021 ; Musheno et al., 2021 ; McLeod, 2022 ; Farris et al., 2021 ).…”

“…‘Frontline’ is a loaded term, invoking connotations of war ( Stedman et al., 2020 ; Farris et al., 2021 ; Kerby et al., 2021 ). As such, the deployment of ‘frontline’ has a performative effect that differs qualitatively from other terms used to describe workers during the COVID-19 response, such as ‘critical’ ( Farris et al., 2021 ).…”