ABSTRACT
The news media monitor the development of the pandemic by updating the number of infection cases in Taiwan. In July 2021, the local governments and the news media in Taiwan adopted a newly coined term “special social cluster” to indicate the COVID-infected gay people and the chain of transmission sparked off. The related news stories went on for four months and the stigmatized impression of gay men has thus formed once again in Taiwan. A corpus analysis of the news with the term special social cluster helps to highlight how gay people are contextualized in the pandemic-related news and how the gaying during the pandemic is fostered. In-depth interviews are conducted to explore gay people’s readings of the expression. This chapter argues that the supervision of the outlaws and the reinvented intimacy during the pandemic times need to be gauged discursively to safeguard human rights at the same time.
