Tidsskrift for Kulturforskning (Jul 2021)
Covid-1984
Abstract
The first Covid-19 infection in Norway was discovered in February 2020, and within two weeks the country went into lockdown. Covid-19, or corona, resulted in a number of measures, such as closing down schools and kindergartens, travel restrictions, restrictions on the number of guests in private homes, and later the use of masks, and the encouraging of getting vaccinated. In Norway, trust in authorities is normally high, e.g. reflected in the high vaccine coverage in the Childhood Vaccination Programme. However, after some time, responses indicated that measures were found too intrusive in people`s lives, and an increasing response was found: Authorities` narratives on how to act (wear a mask, get vaccinated etc.) were met with counter narratives, which in a varying degree related to the authorities` narratives. The research material are newspaper articles from February 2020 - March 2021, as well as Facebook pages and a blog on corona measure resistance, where individual truths and personal opinions are as important as anything else. In the article counter narratives on masks and vaccines, communicated by a fairly heterogenous group, are studied.
