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- Convenors:
-
Adrian Stoicescu
(University of Bucharest)
Dan Mercea (City, University of London)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Health and Medicine
- Sessions:
- Thursday 24 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
Pandemic-skeptics devised various strategies of both avoiding and making others believe that the existence of the virus is an authority induced hoax. We invite specialist to look at who the actors were, why they were vocal and how they tried to make people bend rules.
Long Abstract:
The COVID-19-triggered lockdown all over the world enabled people to reconsider their relations with both other people and with the authority exercising visibly their coercive capacities. From introducing curfews to limitations of movement, from the closing of typically crowded places to imposing individual sanitary rules or mandatory hospital admittance for asymptomatic patients, all these new rules created grounds for acts of rebellious behaviours both online and offline. Conversely, the authorities in other states played the card of less constraints opposing isolation to public immunisation as a strategy to fight against the pandemic.
We welcome specialists from various fields to analyse the online frames and strategies of disobeying the new rules by looking at:
- the actors who become the flag-ships of rule breaking instigation (e.g., previous voices in the discourse against other forms of rejection of biopower, like 'anti-vaxers', opposition politicians who defy the rules for political advantages, religious figures, etc)
- the arguments on which the rejection of the new rules and of medical evidence are based, be it pseudoscience or post-factual evidence
- to what extent individual acts of contestation were followed or refuted by other participants in the pandemic debate
- the poietics of rule-breaking (how such discourse is made by e.g. hate speech, exclusionary discourse practices, humour, irony etc.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 24 June, 2021, -Tove Ingebjørg Fjell (University of Bergen)
Paper short abstract:
Trust in authorities, low numbers of infected, and a large number of rules imposed by the authorities: The initial positive attitude to participation in the voluntary effort to reduce the number of infected, has turned to more negative reactions. Who are the critics, and what are the narratives?
Paper long abstract:
Nations have responded differently to Covid-19. In Norway there was a lockdown around two weeks after the first known infection was reported. The number of infected and the death rate per 100.000 are quite low, and in addition, trust in authorities is high. At first, there was quite a positive attitude to participation in the voluntary effort to reduce the number of infected. During the spring and summer, criticism was directed towards those who holidayed abroad, those who travelled across the border to Sweden for shopping, and to young adults in their 20s and the elderly, who were criticised for not caring enough about social distancing. The second wave hit Norway in late autumn and new recommendations were introduced such as the wearing of masks on public transport and in supermarkets, and restrictions were put on the number of people allowed to gather in private houses. Local and national authorities were now increasingly and more loudly criticised in traditional and social media and, for the time being with a few demonstrations. In this presentation, I will discuss this criticism: Who are the critics? Which narratives are found in the research material? The latter consists of Norwegian traditional media (search words are combinations of “corona, Covid-19, mask, vaccine, scepticism, opposition, rebellion, demonstration”), in addition to Facebook pages related to Covid-19, where the new rules presented by authorities and their potential breaking is being discussed.
Magdalena Góralska (University of Warsaw)
Paper short abstract:
The paper provides an ethnographic overview of complexities of coronaskeptics in Poland, in relation to a long-term fieldwork on medical skepticism in digital age.
Paper long abstract:
Digitalization of knowledge means that Kazimierz can open a browser, than a search engine, type in “rush on a forearm”, go to Google Pictures and look for similarities with what his grandson developed overnight. Moreover, it means that his wife, Beata, who is equally skeptical of the public healthcare system, can pick up her smartphone, go to Facebook, and ask one of the many health advice groups, what might have caused the rush, posting pictures and detailed descriptions. “Doctors don’t have time for patients, they just cure effects, not the cause”, she says, “I want the whole truth, I want the facts”. Across the Polish-speaking Facebook, complementing the already popular health-related portals, blogs, forums, as well as Wikipedia, various self-help groups grow in number and size. Some are in favor of conventional medicine, but many are not, pointing out all those “inconvenient truths” of the “health industry”, once hidden and now finally known to people – thanks to the Internet.
I have been studying the relationship between expert authority crisis and the development of ICTS for the last couple of years. Discourses of skepticism towards conventional expert authorities – whether governmental, medical, or scientific lay within the scope of my interest. When the pandemic broke out in early 2020 I have added the coronavirus as a new case into my study. In this paper I present an insight into the complexities of coronavirus skepticism, mapping the various arguments used by my research participants to support their view on the pandemic.
Antonia Jeflea (University of Tübingen)
Paper short abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic brought into media’s attention populist alliances opposing social distancing and other biopolitics imposed by governments. Parties like AfD in Germany or AUR in Romania are the main actors behind protests and online reactions against measures meant to stop the pandemic.
Paper long abstract:
Seen as alternative political movements for most Eurosceptics, parties with nationalist agendas have been growing in popularity in many European countries in the past years. During the coronavirus pandemic, they became more visible in social media, promoting their values and acquiring more sympathizers. Furthermore, with the help of protests and popular movements held in the offline world, while the vast majority of European citizens were trying to take reasonable measures to stop the virus, parties like AfD in Germany or AUR in Romania raised their popularity. Virtues like nationalism, the appetence for a traditional family or a deliberate option opposing immigrants, bring together groups which belong to a variety of social backgrounds.
With an agenda that concentrates on the image of self in contrast with the greater transnational organizations, like the European Union or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, AfD or AUR marched on the idea of an authority-built pandemic which limits the individuality of people. Thus, measures imposed by governments in most European countries have been seen as threats meant to set up docile bodies, conformable to the biopower even after the pandemic is over. Within months, people adhering to these political alliances became vocal promoters of combatant attitudes against any biopolitics instituted by governments, both in the online and offline worlds.
This paper aims to analyse the course of AfD and AUR sympathizers’ actions during various stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on discourses and protests held by them with the ultimate purpose of opposing the authority.
Simona - Nicoleta Vulpe (University of Bucharest)
Paper short abstract:
Between governmental measures for managing the COVID-19 pandemic and Constitutional Court’s decisions delegitimizing such measures in Romania, discursive strategies of anti-vaxx actors aim to instill resistance to medical expertise and political decisions.
Paper long abstract:
The late modern society has placed a great emphasis on predictability and the power it gave us to cope with risks. However, recent events caused by the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted social life and undermined our reliance on predictability, leaving us prey to the uncertainty. Health risks are increasingly pressing, and predictions regarding the availability of an anti-coronavirus vaccine are rather discouraging. Under these circumstances, anti-vaccination actors denounce experts’ manipulation of information, governmental policies of surveillance and control, and the politically and commercially profitable haste of the current process of developing the vaccine. Through a content analysis of Facebook posts from a Romanian anti-vaccination page, I discuss the role of imagined futures in justifying anti-vaccination stances. As opposing mandatory vaccination in particular and official medical expertise in general are positioned both as an individual act and a political act, its meaning is sustained in a narrative that links past, present, and plausible futures. I observe a shift in discursive strategies made by users during 2020, after the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional the governmental measures for managing the pandemic. I discuss the role of this shift in anti-vaccination and anti-coronavirus instigations and also in valuing the political efficacy of resistance to official medical expertise.
Adrian Stoicescu (University of Bucharest)
Paper short abstract:
Religious discourse against pandemic rules may be either a way to care for the spiritual well-being of its followers or a strategy to consolidate authority capitalising on voices of pandemic skeptics.
Paper long abstract:
There are many voices raised against the restrictions imposed in connection to the prevention of COVID 19 aggressive spreading. The arguments brought forth build up as a way to contest medical hegemonies and, additionally, to offer alternative safeguarding methods to fight against the virus. Against an increasingly eroded public image the Romanian Orthodox Church holds, religious reasoning plays a rather vigorous role in capitalising the disbelief of the many opposing the rules or contesting the existence of any virus.
This paper will look at how some clergymen and, occasionally, the entire Church, deliberately defied the social distancing rules by summoning people to sermons, performing certain Christian rituals, even taking to court the authorities’ for banning the pilgrimage to the patron saint of the Romanians. However, such attitude was rather inconsistent reaching spikes of utter virulence followed by periods of calmed opposition.
This paper ponders whether the Orthodox Church discourse stems from an authentic care for the spiritual well-being of the faithful or from an intricate strategy to regain a strong foothold in the game of authority building. In doing so, it will investigate how the religious arguments unfold on social media and digital news agency in contrast with how such discourse is perceived among wider categories of publics and the types of arguments used in encouraging rule breaking.