During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, British social media influencers posted pictures and stories from Dubai. As a result, the emirate faced an intense backlash from the British media. This study considers the British media’s motivations for constituting Dubai as Orientalist ‘other’ while uncovering earlier imagined geographies of the Orient. The study develops the novel concept of ‘intermedia geographies’ to trace intertextual links, tales, texts, content, audiences and discourses, as dynamic constellations of the postdigital condition. Unique methods of postdigital critical discourse analysis are developed to map a corpus of 20 British magazine, tabloid and broadsheet newspaper articles, which are the jumping-off point to intertextual references to television, film and earlier Oriental narratives. Theorizing levels up from description to nuanced analysis to illustrate that the themes of content, stance and social actors’ positioning within the corpus are indicative of Britain’s siloed mainstream audiences and postdigital reinforcements of colonial discourse.

中文翻译：

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“COVID Casablanca”：迪拜英国社交媒体影响者和后数字媒体地理的案例

在 2021 年 COVID-19 大流行期间，英国社交媒体影响者发布了来自迪拜的图片和故事。结果，该酋长国面临英国媒体的强烈反对。这项研究考虑了英国媒体将迪拜构成东方主义“他者”的动机，同时揭示了早期想象的东方地理。该研究开发了“跨媒体地理”的新概念，以追踪互文链接、故事、文本、内容、观众和话语，作为后数字条件的动态星座。开发了独特的后数字批评话语分析方法，以绘制包含 20 篇英国杂志、小报和大报的文章的语料库，这些文章是对电视、电影和早期东方叙事的互文引用的起点。