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This article examines one of the hegemonic narratives social actors worldwide have used since 2020 to make sense of the Covid-19 pandemic: the one articulated around the hero-villain dichotomy. We can find this standard adversative structure in various narratives such as myths, fairy tales, novels, movies, and the social sphere in general. The pandemic has not escaped its explicative power. Since March 2020, healthcare workers have been widely represented as heroes-and even superheroes-fighting to protect humanity, while the novel coronavirus is typically depicted as an evil creature-a monster-threatening human life. After introducing narrativity as a key principle in articulating social discourses, the article analyses the role of the hero-villain narrative structure in the Covid-19 pandemic focusing on how it shaped the discursive construction of the virus as a villain and the healthcare workers as heroes. © The Authors.
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COVID-19 reached South Africa in March 2020, with a national lockdown being implemented on the 26th of that month. The lockdown entailed a total shutdown of non-essential businesses, a curfew and strict safety precautions such as masks, sanitizers and social distance. This chapter examines the impact of COVID-19 in the first 6 months of the pandemic and its subsequent regulations in four small towns (Ceres, Tulbagh, Riebeek Kasteel and Riebeek West) in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Key stakeholders from governance, business, health, tourism and residents were interviewed on experiences during this time pertaining to tourism, governance, food security and social welfare. It was found that poverty, unemployment and crime are factors that detract from the prioritization and capacity with which COVID-19 was managed in each town. Rapid rising food insecurity has become a central component to the COVID-19 management strategy and it was handled differently by CBOs and local government. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
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Societies often respond to a crisis by attributing blame to some groups while constructing others as victims and heroes. While it has received scant sociological attention, 'panic buying' is a critical indicator of such public sentiment at the onset of a crisis, and thus a crucial site for analysis. This article traces dynamics of blame in news media representations of an extreme period of panic buying during COVID-19 in Australia. Analysis reveals that lower socio-economic and ethnically diverse consumers were blamed disproportionately. Unlike wealthier consumers who bulk-bought online, shoppers filling trollies in-store were depicted as selfish and shameful, described using dehumanising language, and portrayed as 'villains' who threatened social order. Supermarkets were cast simultaneously as 'victims' of consumer aggression and 'heroes' for their moral leadership, trustworthiness and problem-solving. This portrayal misunderstands the socio-emotional drivers of panic buying, exacerbates stigma towards already disadvantaged groups, and veils the corporate profiteering that encourages stockpiling.
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In this article, we analyze the image of healthcare and health professionals in the Russian television media agenda before and during the COVID-19 pan-demic and determine the frequency and content of health-related news reports on federal and regional evening newscasts for 2019-2021 (by the example of two news programs-Vremya, Channel One, and Vesti. Don, channel Russia-1). Content analysis of news reports was conducted by the Southern Federal University research team (Rostov-on-Don, Russia) in the course of the RFBR-supported research project on social well-being of the medical community in a complex epidemiological situation. Altogether, we have analyzed 1096 evening Vremya newscasts and 784 Vesti. Don newscasts. The sample set included 244 Vremya news items (about 19% of the total number), and 152 Vesti. Don news items (about 17%, respectively). The sampling was random mechanical (with a certain preset interval). The coded categories and units of analysis were registered as cards, one card per each news item. As the categories for analysis, we have selected topic, genre, nature, locality, length, central figure in a news piece, and presence of a challenge or a problem situation. Unit of count-news piece. On both federal and regional television in general, there was a significant increase in the number of news stories on healthcare from 2019 to 2021. In 2020 and 2021, the thematic angle has changed radically towards the news on the pandemic of a 2019 coronavirus disease and vaccination against it. It should be noted that the main heroes of health-related news reports were and still are neither doctors, nor patients, but representatives of the authorities and Rospotrebnadzor;the share of reports about ordinary doctors was decreasing;with the launch of COVID-19 vaccination, the number of news items featuring mid-level health professionals went up;on the other hand, as COVID-19 was spreading, scientists and inventors appeared in health-related news less frequently, especially in regional news;the pandemic has significantly shifted the focus from child patients to adults, and especially to the elderly. Keywords: medicine, healthcare, healthcare worker, doctor, nursing staff, media agenda, media, COVID-19 pandemic, coronavirus, content analysis, television, news story, in-depth interview
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Background: While understaffing and work-related stress are not unusual within first responder professions, the past few years have added additional strain. COVID-19, political and civil unrest, and economic downturn have stretched the first responder workforce thinner than ever, contributing to a reduction in the workforce through death, early retirement, attrition, or decreased vocational effectiveness. Unfortunately, public stereotypes coupled with the tenets of first responder culture have done little to support those who serve. Public perception often involves polarized stereotypes about first responders (e.g., good guys or bad guys, heroes or villains), and first responder culture encourages a machine-like demeanor. The imagery of heroes, villains, and machines is indicative of dehumanization, or denial of some aspect(s) of humanity. The purpose of this study was to examine how first responders' perceptions of dehumanization (meta-dehumanization) relate to workforce threats including suicidality, burnout, and decreased self-efficacy. Methodology: A total of 211 first responders from the US and Canada participated in this study by completing two measures of meta-dehumanization, the Suicide Behaviors Questionnaire-Revised, the Burnout subscale of the Professional Quality of Life Scale, and the General Self-Efficacy Scale. Analyses included Pearson product-moment correlation, ANOVAs, and hierarchical regression analyses. Results: Statistically significant relationships were found between meta-dehumanization for each of the three workforce threats when controlling for time in the profession. Results from ancillary analyses indicated that these relationships continued to be statistically significant even after controlling for country of residence (US or Canada). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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This essay is an exploration of how collective resilience can arise even in the worst of circumstances: a global pandemic that has adversely affected millions. Resilience can be a source of positivity, optimism and hope, and guide the kinds of behaviour to help overcome the challenges posed by COVID-19. This essay have identified three research pathways for collective resilience, but they are by no means exhaustive. People and communities will find other pathways to resilience;my hope is that this essay may spur future researchers to identify new possibilities, to good effect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders and society at large invoked militarized rhetoric and war metaphors to elevate essential workers and inspire collective action. Using a survey experiment we investigate whether this type of framing affects public views about (1) individual responsibilities, (2) targeted polices, and (3) perceptions of those called heroes and soldiers. We find that the war metaphor has minimal effects on public attitudes toward policies and individual actions in response to the pandemic. Framing the response in militaristic terms does, however, appear to affect perceptions of essential workers. Counter to our hypotheses, subjects who saw essential workers called heroes or soldiers viewed them as more motivated by compensation rather than service, and expressed less respect for them, than respondents in the control. These findings, including the nulls, make important contributions to our understanding of the limits of framing effects in a polarized context.
ABSTRACT
The phrase 'in it together' has been used liberally since the outbreak of COVID-19, but the extent that frontline workers felt 'in it together' is not well understood. Here, we consider the factors that built (or eroded) solidarity while working through the pandemic, and how frontline workers navigated their lives through periods of disconnection. Semi-structured interviews with 21 frontline workers, across all sectors, were conducted in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The qualitative data were analysed systematically using reflexive thematic analysis. The three themes identified in the data were: (1) Solidarity as central to frontline experiences; (2) Leadership as absent, shallow and divisive: highlighting 'us-them' distinctions and (3) The rise of 'us' and 'we' among colleagues. Our research offers insights into how frontline workers make sense of their experiences of solidarity and discordance during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, with relevance for government and organizational policy-makers shaping future conditions for frontline workers.
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This paper proposes an analysis of the storytelling of the COVID pandemic in Wuhan in the first months of 2020 as depicted by two TV dramas: Heroes and With you. This analysis will be carried out by identifying the elements common to the two TV series in the description of their protagonists and the way in which they dialogue with real people and about real facts, also in relation to the presentations offered by television producers to the press, and those published in specialized or party magazines. The dramas are therefore considered as spaces of interpretation of the individual experience in a collective sense, and as discourses in which memory exerts a fundamental role in the definition of the social and cultural self, in order to understand whether the COVID pandemic is regarded in China as a cultural trauma. © 2022 Universita degli Studi di Milano. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
This paper proposes an analysis of the storytelling of the COVID pandemic in Wuhan in the first months of 2020 as depicted by two TV dramas: Heroes and With you. This analysis will be carried out by identifying the elements common to the two TV series in the description of their protagonists and the way in which they dialogue with real people and about real facts, also in relation to the presentations offered by television producers to the press, and those published in specialized or party magazines. The dramas are therefore considered as spaces of interpretation of the individual experience in a collective sense, and as discourses in which memory exerts a fundamental role in the definition of the social and cultural self, in order to understand whether the COVID pandemic is regarded in China as a cultural trauma. © 2022 Universita degli Studi di Milano. All rights reserved.
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The gendered features of adults’ attributions of heroism to themselves and others has received substantially less scholarly attention than the gendered dynamics of media representations of (super)heroes. Utilizing 78 interviews and 569 self-administered questionnaires completed by adults in the United States who were voluntarily making personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic, we show how respondents effectively deployed popularized assessments of the relative value of gendered labour in the private and public spheres to shift attributions of heroism from themselves to others. Though media portrayals at the outset of the pandemic depicted these volunteers working in their homes as heroes, respondents insisted that the real heroes were those working in the public sphere. Even if media representations increasingly frame women as heroes, these results suggest that the long-standing associations between men and heroism will likely remain in place if feminized labour associated with the private sphere of households remains devalued. [ FROM AUTHOR]
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this research is to study the efficacy of the home-based Hero program in promoting positive emotions and prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. The sample included 237 12- to 15-year-old adolescents from Argentina. The level of positive emotions and prosocial behavior toward strangers, friends and family in the adolescent intervention group increased through the three evaluation periods. The Hero program was focused on recognizing one's own emotions and provided an opportunity to reflect on different positive aspects of life, thus allowing a change in perspective related to immediate negative events. Moreover, the program provided an opportunity to change adolescents' perspective from personal worries to concerns about others, including friends, family members, and even strangers in need. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
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How do individuals react to the sudden public moralization of their work and with what consequences? Extant research has documented how public narratives can gradually moralize societal perceptions of select occupations. Yet, the implications of how workers individually respond and form self-narratives in light of—or in spite of—a sudden moralizing event remain less understood. Such an understanding is even more critical when workers are weakly socialized by their organization, a situation increasingly common today. During the COVID-19 pandemic, radically shifting public narratives suddenly transformed grocery delivery work, previously uncelebrated, into highly moralized “heroic” pursuits. Drawing on interviews (n = 75), participant artifacts (n = 85), and archival data (e.g., newspaper articles), we find that these workers (here, shoppers on the platform organization Instacart), left mainly to themselves, exhibited varying responses to this moralizing and that their perceived relations to the organization, customers, and tasks shaped these responses. Surprisingly, those who facilely adopted the hero label felt morally credentialled, and they were thus likely to minimize their extra-role helping of customers and show low commitment to the organization;in contrast, those who wrestled with the hero narrative sought to earn those moral credentials, and they were more likely to embrace extra-role helping and remain committed to moralized aspects of the work. Our study contributes to literatures on the moralization of work and narratives by explaining why some workers accept a moralized narrative and others reject or wrestle with it, documenting consequences of workers’ reactions to such narratives, and suggesting how a moralized public narrative can backfire. © 2022 Elsevier Inc.
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March 2020 our lives as health-care professionals forever changed. Previously seen by others as just doing a job, now we are the heroes of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. How did that happen? Will it last? How long are we going to be seen as heroes? When will it end, if ever? Heroes have great powers and overcome evil quickly. Now months have gone by and COVID-19 is still among us. This evil sickness is present in our jobs and our lives, and the heroes are losing their superpowers, energy and stamina. As time passes, have we been forgotten or do people just no longer care? Superheroes usually are not forgotten. Yet this is a new type of superheroe. How long will we been seen as such? Time will tell. On the other hand, are health-care professionals the martyrs of this age? You may think that we are if you take into consideration that we are exposing ourselves to the virus every time we go to work, but you are right that is our work. In college, we were never prepared on how to lose a coworker. You are not thought on how to take care of a sick friend much less to have them die in your arms. Maybe we are martyrs or maybe is just how life is during a pandemic. Lots of questions without a definite answer. We are learning who we really are as days go by. Yesterday I felt like a hero, today I am a martyr. How are we going to feel or be seen by others in the next months? © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Germany’s Covid-19 protesters and members of the far right have tried to appropriate two key historical figures associated with the German anti-Nazi resistance, Sophie Scholl (1921–1943), who distributed anti-government leaflets, and Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (1907–1944), the mastermind of the failed coup of 20 July 1944. Neumann places these attempts in the context of the afterlives of Scholl, Stauffenberg and aspiring Hitler assassin Georg Elser (1903–1945). First, he argues that the far right’s attempt to claim Stauffenberg should not be read as a move to deny the Holocaust, nor to reject Germany’s responsibility for it, but rather to distance itself from Holocaust deniers and shift public discourses about German identity and history. Second, he argues that Covid-19 protesters have identified with Scholl because she has been considered the quintessential ‘good German’, she cannot be located on a left–right political spectrum and she represents German resistance as well as victimhood. Finally, he suggests that the success of these attempts to appropriate historical figures points to a lack of knowledge not about Nazi Germany’s victims, or about Scholl and Stauffenberg themselves, but rather about the nature of the Nazi regime.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has been reported to be associated with numerous major mental health issues globally;the most common is stress, anxiety, depressive symptoms, insomnia, denial, anger, and fear. This case study presents here is that the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the significant loss of their family member followed by mental health symptoms experienced by children. This case study highlights the need to develop preventive strategies for vulnerable groups and try to understand the etiopathogenesis of illnesses so developing, in order to identify support systems and management strategies during the pandemic related crisis.
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While virtual classrooms and conferences have left many of us feeling isolated from our students, mentors, and colleagues, remote-access technologies such as Zoom and Ex Ordo have also opened up such spaces to individuals who, for financial or geographical reasons, have not had the same access. Scholars of early America perhaps feel this paradox particularly acutely, as controversies around the 1619 Project and the place of critical race theory in public education have generated rigorous, sometimes vitriolic, debate about the meaning of America's past and present. The Quaker "agrarian on the margins" that Miller explored not only enriches our notions of Quakerism or the ends of religious reform movements in the colonial era but also constitutes a forgotten discourse of labor activism that, like Batra's models of early Black dissent, suggest longer genealogies for the history of social justice reform in the Americas. According to nineteenth- and twentieth-century histories of the Haudenosaunee, the Clinton-Sullivan campaign of 1779 radically severed ancient Haudenosaunee ties to their lands and forcibly reduced them to subsistence on reservation-like settlements at Buffalo Creek.
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Purpose>Drawing upon cohort theory, the age-period-cohort framework and the portrait value system, this paper aims to examine differences in basic human values between generations Y and Z as they are shaped by recent major events (most importantly the COVID-19 pandemic).Design/methodology/approach>Hypothesized differences between values of generation Y and Z were tested using a content analysis of recent articles (Study 1) and an online survey through a prolific crowdsourcing website (Study 2).Findings>This research finds that while both generations value universalism and benevolence, Generation Y is more likely to conform and follow traditions while Generation Z values stimulation, hedonism and achievement more. The top two COVID-19 concerns for both groups were the health of others and financial security. Generation Y is more concerned about the economy while Generation Z is more worried about uncertainty in their future.Research limitations/implications>This paper provides insight into how the current environmental crisis has shaped the values of generations Y and Z and offers an understanding of the similarities and differences in values between these two generations.Practical implications>The findings have direct implications for the design of products/services and for the creation of effective marketing communications to reach these two consumer groups.Originality/value>This research is novel in identifying the basic human values of generations Y and Z as they are shaped by recent events such as the most recent economic recession and COVID-19.
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Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, frontline workers have carried out essential roles to keep society going, while the public have been called to minimise the infection rate to limit the burden on frontline workers. In this sense, navigating Covid-19 has necessitated interdependence between frontline workers and key stakeholder groups (such as their colleagues, organisations, their government, and the public). Reports suggest that frontline workers have perceived varying degrees of solidarity with others throughout the pandemic, yet the influence of perceived solidarity on psychological welfare has received limited empirical or theoretical attention. The aim of the present study was to test the importance of perceived solidarity (or solidarity appraisal) by assessing the relationship between perceptions of solidarity and psychological welfare in frontline workers - across all sectors - during Covid-19, and explore the role of a potential mechanism (i.e., meaning in life) for explaining this relationship. To assess this proposed model, we used cross-sectional and longitudinal data from a project tracking a cohort of frontline workers in the UK and Ireland since March 2020. Participants were surveyed at baseline (T1), at six months (T2), and 12 months (T3). At T3, participants (N â= â414) reported their perceived solidarity (with colleagues, organisations, government, and public) along with a range of psychological welfare measures. Overall, frontline workers' levels of meaning in life dropped significantly over time. Lower levels of perceived solidarity were predictive of poorer wellbeing, and higher anxiety, burnout, post-traumatic stress symptoms, and somatic stress symptoms, and these relationships were mediated by the presence of meaning in life. These findings suggest that perceived solidarity with interdependent social groups may imbue life with meaning, which can in turn have a positive influence on psychological welfare in chronic and cumulatively stressful occupational settings.
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En el presente documento intentaremos no recurrir a determinismos, ya sean apocalípticos o integrados (Eco, 2004), sino que apelaremos a generar nuevas lecturas y preguntas desde una perspectiva crítica. De esta forma, nos proponemos abordar -en torno a las redes sociales- algunas concepciones teóricas sobre la figura del carnaval y la máscara, como también, desarrollar articulaciones en torno a la noción de exposición y del mito del héroe para repensar la participación ciudadana en la red. Transversalmente, se intentarán evidenciar las posibles tensiones en relación a la mercantilización de la cotidianeidad, a través de la instauración de necesidades, el consumo incesante y la manipulación subjetiva que subyace en ciertas estrategias del mercado vía redes sociales, intensificadas más aún en épocas de COVID-19. La máscara y los personajes que encarnan se materializan como analizadores que permiten visualizar aquello que podría estar detrás, lo oculto, y asimismo, posibilitan distinguir entre –lo que aquí denominamos- las identidades inventadas (usuarios) y las identidades construidas históricamente, aquellas que nos nombran y nos dan pertenencia en una genealogía (el nombre propio). En el complejo ordenamiento social y simbólico que producen las redes, entendemos que existen expresiones de múltiples violencias: de género, ambiental, económica, psicológica, violencias sobre los derechos de grupos, sobre los valores colectivos. Es decir, bajo la lógica de la reproducción social de las desigualdades, para que haya héroes debe haber caídos.Alternate :This article will not try to resort to determinisms, but rather appeal to generate new readings and questions from a critic perspective. We propose to address –regarding social networks- some theoretical conceptions about the carnival figure and the mask, and also, to develop articulations around the notion of exposure and the myth of the hero to re-think the citizen’s participation in the net. Furthermore, we’ll try to evidentiate the possible tensions with the commercialization of the every day life, through the creation of needs, non stop consumerism and the subjective manipulation underlying in certain market strategies via social networks, intensified even more in times of COVID-19. The mask and the characters represented are analyzers that allow us to visualize what might be beneath and so, they enable distinguishing between –what we here denominate- the invented identities (users) and the historically constructed identities, those that name us and give us belonging in a genealogy (our own name). In the complex social and symbolic organization that nets produce, we understand that there are expressions of multiple violences: of gender, environmental, economic, psychological, rights, the collective values. Under the logic of the social reproduction of inequalities, for there to be heroes it must have defeats.