Communicating COVID-19

This chapter introduces the goal of the book, namely to answer the question: How have society and the ways we communicate changed in the COVID-19 pandemic crisis?

It outlines the context, namely the COVID-19 pandemic's transformation of society and analyses what role capitalism plays in this role as context of the pandemic that is not its cause but a condition and that does not determine but conditions the effects of the pandemic on society.

In 2020, the coronavirus crisis ruptured societies and their everyday life around the globe. This chapter is a contribution to critically theorising the changes societies have undergone in the light of the coronavirus crisis. It asks: How have everyday life and everyday communication changed in the coronavirus crisis? How does capitalism shape everyday life and everyday communication during this crisis?

This chapter focuses on how social space, everyday life and everyday communication have changed in the coronavirus crisis.

The coronavirus crisis is an existential crisis of humanity and society. It radically confronts humans with death and the fear of death. This collective experience can on the one hand result in new forms of solidarity and socialism or can on the other hand, if ideology and the far-right prevail, advance war and fascism. Political action and political economy are decisive factors in such a profound crisis that shatters society and everyday life.

This chapter deals with the question: What is a conspiracy theory? It provides a concept of conspiracy theories and situates conspiracy theories in the context of COVID-19.

In order to understand how COVID-19 conspiracy theories work, one requires a theoretical concept of conspiracy theories. The developed understanding is especially grounded in Frankfurt School critical theory. Section 2 of this chapter works out a critical theory concept of conspiracy theories. Section 3 is an introduction to the communication of COVID-19 conspiracy theories.

This chapter asks: How do COVID-19 conspiracy theories about Bill Gates work? In order to provide an answer, it analyses social media artefacts that make conspiratorial claims about Bill Gates such as the ones that he manufactured the virus, makes money from COVID-19 vaccines, plans to dominate the world and erect a dictatorship, and implants surveillance microchips into humans via COVID-19 vaccinations. The focus is on artefacts that have massively spread and have reached high visibility on social media and the Internet. A critical discourse analysis was conducted of this material.

The findings show that and how COVID-19 conspiracy theories construct the existence of a secret elite that dominates the world, use ideological strategies such as the personalisation of domination, the friend/enemy scheme, rational irrationality and logical determinism. COVID-19 conspiracy theories are a necrophilic ideology, an ideology of death that advances death and increases the number of deaths. This pandemic ideology tries to convince humans that vaccines are harmful and that COVID-19 is a hoax, whereby human misery is advanced. COVID-19 conspiracy theories are to a large degree a right-wing ideology.

This chapter asks: How do Internet users react to COVID-19 conspiracy theories spread on social media? It presents the findings of a content analysis and critical discourse analysis of user comments collected from social media postings that advance COVID-19 conspiracy theories. A total of 2,847 comments made to seven social media postings whose authors support COVID-19 conspiracy theories were collected, coded and analysed.

The analysis shows the contested character of the communication of COVID-19 conspiracy theories and the role of the friend/enemy scheme, verbal attacks, violent threats, satire and humour in such communication processes.

This chapter asks: How has Donald Trump communicated about COVID-19 on Twitter? How have conspiracy theories influenced his Twitter communication about COVID-19? Utilising critical discourse analysis, it analysed tweets in which Trump communicated about COVID-19 and showed that he used social media to spread conspiracy theories and fake news about COVID-19.

The findings show that Donald Trump uses social media such as Twitter for spreading far-right ideology, conspiracy theories and fake news. He makes use of a variety of linguistic ideological devices. In the context of COVID-19, Trump has spread a variety of conspiracy theories to his millions of followers, which has contributed to the intensification of risks and harms at the time of the worst global health crisis in 100 years.

This chapter draws conclusion from the analyses presented in the preceding chapters.

Everyday life and everyday communication have undergone large changes in the pandemic crisis. The conclusion asks in what kind of society we want to live and how we want to communicate in the future. It poses the question of what kind of Internet we want and need in the future in post-pandemic times. Commontopia is presented as the potential future of communication and society.