News Media Complicity in the Reproduction of Settler Colonial Ideology in Guåhan

Abstract

Over the span of one month, Guåhan (Guam) has seen a dire upswing in COVID-19 infections from travelers coming from the continental United States (many of them being military personnel). The island, being an “unincorporated territory” of the U.S., did not have the legal authority to close its borders and could only mitigate the impacts of the second spike in COVID-19. Often referred to as “the Tip of America’s Spear,” the pandemic has laid bare the implications of Guåhan’s colonial status, and is one of the numerous manifestations of American colonial ideology and policy at the nexus of global militarism and imperialism. In this essay, I examine mainstream news media in Guåhan to draw out the presence of pro-American ideologies which operate through modes of unification, dissimulation, and legitimation to reproduce American colonial hegemony in what can be described as an extant colonial mainstream mediascape. By looking at particular discursive events which occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, I elucidate how such media environments perpetuate the dominant order of American militarization and imperialism overseas, calling to mind how the country’s transgressions abroad are inseparable from the systems of oppression in the continent.