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Quantification is central to the narration of the COVID-19 pandemic. Numbers determine the existence of the problem and affect our ability to care and contribute to relief efforts. Yet many communities at the margins, including many areas of the Global South, are virtually absent from this number-based narration of the pandemic. This essay builds on critical data studies to warn against the universalization of problems, narratives, and responses to the virus. To this end, it explores two types of data gaps and the corresponding “data poor.” The first gap concerns the data poverty perduring in low-income countries and jeopardizing their ability to adequately respond to the pandemic. The second affects vulnerable populations within a variety of geopolitical and socio-political contexts, whereby data poverty constitutes a dangerous form of invisibility which perpetuates various forms of inequality. But, even during the pandemic, the disempowered manage to create innovative forms of solidarity from below that partially mitigate the negative effects of their invisibility.Since China’s lockdown of major cities in response to COVID-19, different forms of online participatory initiatives led by self-organizing groups of volunteers have greatly contributed to information circulation, patient admission support, and other aspects of coping with the pandemic. Although often overlooked by those studying online cultural production during the pandemic, a massive spontaneous and participatory creative outpouring of individual and collaborative artworks related to “fight the pandemic” are being published through platforms including Kuaishou, TikTok, and WeChat public accounts. this website This article argues that while these participatory online exhibitions published through WeChat opened up a temporary space of expression that both offset the lack of information and enabled alternative ways of understanding of and expression about the crisis, they were not only subject to pervasive state surveillance, but also co-optation by state media.The panic and anxiety that accompanies a global pandemic is only exacerbated by the spread of misinformation. For COVID-19, in many parts of the world, such misinformation is circulating through globally popular mobile instant messaging services (MIMS) like WhatsApp and Telegram. Compared to more public social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, these services offer private, intimate, and often encrypted spaces for users to chat with family members and friends, making it difficult for the platform to moderate misinformation on them. Thus, there is an enhanced onus on users of MIMS to curb misinformation by correcting their family and friends within these spaces. Research on understanding how such relational correction occurs in different parts of the globe will need to attend to how the nature of these interpersonal relationships and the cultural dynamics that influence them shape the correction process. Thus, as people increasingly use MIMS to connect with close relations to make sense of this global crisis, studying the issue of misinformation on these services requires us to adopt a relationship-centered and culturally informed approach.Since the onset of COVID-19, incidents of racism and xenophobia have been occurring globally, especially toward people of East Asian appearance and descent. In response, this article investigates how an online Asian community has utilized social media to engage in cathartic expressions, mutual care, and discursive activism amid the rise of anti-Asian racism and xenophobia during COVID-19. Specifically, we focus on the 1.7-million-strong Facebook group “Subtle Asian Traits” (SAT). Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the 1,200 new posts it publishes daily have swiftly pivoted to the everyday lived experiences of (diaspora) East Asians around the world. In this article, we reflect on our experiences as East Asian diaspora members on SAT and share our observations of meaning-making, identity-making, and community-making as East Asians collectively coping with COVID-19 aggression between January and May 2020.Covid-19 represents a systemic event-a state of emergency-that disrupts the routines of societies from the level of individuals to institutions, nations, and global interaction. Revealing the vulnerability of the intensively interconnected world suggests a juxtaposition with another systemic crisis the climate emergency. Drawing on some key literature on the different aspects of “events”-as heightened political semiosis (Wagner-Pacifi), as (possible) transformation of social and symbolic structures (Sewell), and as moments where new horizons are opened (Arendt)-this essay suggests three intersecting themes where reactions to Covid-19 help to sharpen the crucial questions of future journalism the role of “knowledge” and expertise, the power of national framing, and the challenge of covering the new imperatives and possibilities of everyday life.In March 2020, like much of the rest of the world, we went into lockdown. A week into our new reality, we decided to do a survey study about how people were experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic. In this piece, we describe what motivated us to do the study, how we went about it, and what others can learn from our experiences.Online disinformation has been on the rise in recent years. A digital outbreak of disinformation has spread around the COVID-19 pandemic, often referred to as an “infodemic.” Since January 2020, digital media have been both the culprits of and antidotes to misinformation. The first months of the pandemic have shown that countering disinformation online has become as important as ensuring much needed medical equipment and supplies for health workers. For many governments around the world, priority COVID-19 actions included measures such as (a) providing guidance to social media companies on taking down contentious pandemic content (e.g., India); (b) establishing special units to combat disinformation (e.g., EU, UK); and (c) criminalizing malicious coronavirus falsehood, including in relation to public health measures. This article explores the short and potential long-term effects of newly passed legislation in various countries directly targeting COVID-19 disinformation on the media, whether traditional or digital.