A typology of social characters and various means of control: an analysis of communication during the early stages of the corona pandemic in Germany

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that Covid-19 has produced a set of social characters during the corona crisis and that these characters represent different approaches toward control. Social characters emerge as constructs responding to current discourses. They may function as role models in uncertain times and offer orientation. The paper identifies such characters in communication on the online platform Jodel. It analyses and discusses the properties of the following social characters, which are reconstructed inductively from the data, classifying 156 Jodel posts into the following typology: the social worker, the crisis entrepreneur, the worried and depressed loner, the crisis manager, the admonisher, and the health expert. All these characters also display different approaches to how the crisis could be controlled. Some of them highlight economic discourses, others psychological discourses, and again others bureaucratic discourses. The analysis of the social characters and their approaches to control contributes to research on the role of discourses in modern European societies and on how these discourses contribute to different approaches to controlling a crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• Corona crisis
• discourse analysis
• role models
• pandemic
• social characters
• social control

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tim Seidenschnur

Tim Seidenschnur is coordinator of the thematic area ‘Governance and Organization’ at the International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER) from April 2018 on. As a sociologist, he is especially working in the fields of organization studies, higher education research, and cultural sociology. He has published on management consultancy in public organizations, on Brexit in the field of higher education, and on anti-Semitism in adolescent peer groups. Tim Seidenschnur worked at the University of Würzburg as a research associate and at the University of Kassel as a lecturer before joining INCHER.