Covidiots and the ‘stay home behavioural script’

The Corona-virus, which  infecting millions of people and caused more than 250 thousand deaths worldwide, has not only captured the world’s attention, but  showed how quick and profound our cultural norms can change when society feels its health is at risk. The corona-crisis has not only changed the way we perceive others and ourselves due to the corona-crisis, the norms we used to take for granted are turned upside down.

For example, in Western countries we are used to shaking hand when we meet one another. This very basic and old cultural norm has now been advised against by prime minister Mark Rutte in the Netherlands, an act unthinkable when taking it out of its context of the corona pandemic. However, after imposing this new rule, Mark Rutte accidently shook hands with Jaap van Dissel, head of the infectious disease department of the Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu (RIVM). An entirely ‘normal’ act suddenly becomes embarrassing: our moralized behavioural scripts have changed.

This article analyses two groups of people which appeared in response to the pandemic, following almost opposite behavioural scripts. The ‘Covidiots’ are a group who advocate ignoring the Corona measures taken by the government, while the other group urges people to do as the government and the experts say. In this article, we call this group the ‘Stay homers’, since they advocate self-quarantining strongly. The terms 'Covidiots' and 'stay homers' are inequal in the sense that a derrogatory term has emerged for people who do not obey the social norms. 

In this article, we start with explaining how Moralized Behavioural Scripts form the attitude of these two groups towards the measurements taken by the government. Secondly, we explain the characteristics of these two groups and the behaviour they cause in other people by analysing the hashtag ‘Covidiots’ on Twitter and the ‘Covidiot shamegroups’ on Facebook. Finally, we conclude with a summary of the characteristics of the ‘Covidiots’ and the ‘stay - homers’, concluding the Corona-virus pandemic has caused new tensions in society.

Deviating from the moralized behavioural scripts

What we will see here is the Corona virus being a trigger for a society being governed by politicians, to a society being governed by medical experts in which freedom of the individual is being sacrificed for the health of the whole societ It becomes the discipline of the scientific protection of society; it becomes the science of the biological protection of the species. (Foucault, 2003).This freedom of the individual is on a constant par with the health of the community. The big differences between the ‘stay homers’ and the Covidiots are rooted in this dichotomy between collective health and individual freedom.

Moralized behaviour scripts (MBS) are imaginable situations in nonrandom spacetime which provoke normative, expected and presupposed behaviour (Blommaert, 2015). They are non - random as they appear in certain situations (a MBS arrives in reaction to a specific event). Spacetime in this sence refers to the specific place and moment in which the behavioral scripts occur. These scripts are able to inform us on how to act in certain situations through the very strong sociallynormative judgments we attach to them. The MBS during the current pandemic emerged from a power exchange of the judicial – governmental force and the expert opinion of doctors (Foucault, 2003). Doctors, who have no means of governing a country, inform politicians on how to govern a society susceptible to .

The MBS during the current pandemic emerged from a power exchange of the judicial – governmental force and the expert opinion of doctors.

The attitude of the Covidiots towards the COVID-19 health measurements  characterized by deviating from the current, new moralized behavioural scripts. The covidiots, often deliberately,  moralized behavioural script of staying home and keeping distance. This is in line with the definition of a covidiots suggested by the Urban Dictionary: someone who ignores the warnings regarding public health or safety.

What is most surprising and interesting about this group of covidiots, is that their now deviant behaviour would have been entirely normative before our collective health was at stake and the corona-crisis changed our scripts. Before the pandemic, when someone sneezed in public, the people around them would say “bless you’’ and continue their business as usual. However, during the Corona-virus pandemic, everyone around the sneezing person is alarmed. Now that their personal safety is at stake, the behavioural script has changed. Sneezing in public without your mouth covered is something a Covidiot would do. We automatically make a strongly moralized judgment when this happens: the sneezing person is dangerous. They are not just sneezing: they are a Covidiot, endangering the health of society.

Apart from the group of Covidiots ignoring the warnings regarding public health or safety, there is another group which doesn’t deviate from the new moralized behavioural scripts. The ‘Stayhomers’ are a mainstream group in the global Corona public sphere who advocate staying home and try keeping society as safe as possible. Staying home and keeping distance are the moralized behavioural scripts that the experts developed and the governments advice and in some way impose. The attitude of the ‘Stay home group’ is formed by conforming to the MBS in society. The stay - home groups can be regarded as a normative control which functions next to official institutions like the police and the government.

Media play  role of normativity crusaders, showing the stay - home ideology as an objective fact. he Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf headlined the following message at the start of this month: Bizarre: despite corona - prohibition big demonstration in Berlin. With other words: 'It is bizarre that despite the prohibition of demonstration in (large) groups due to Covid, people are disobeying these rules, endangering others'. The ideology is clear: stay home, otherwise you are bizarre, abnormal.

A surprising and very recent nuance is brought on by people who do not only contest the Covidiots, but also contest the government, in particular when it comes to relaxing the measures as infections are (slowly) decreasing. These people are very frightened by the disease and the damage it has done and refuse to go back to work when people resume going back to work. Some parents want to keep their children at home despite the opening of the primary schools.

Covidiots invoking critici on social media

Multiple Covidiot-and-corona-shaming groups appeared on Facebook between March and April this year. The hashtag ‘covidiot’ became trending. These groups and hashtags are aimed at shaming people who trespass the rules of the government of corona prevention or who don’t follow the generalized behavioural scripts that originated due the corona-crisis. They are created by  advocating staying home and keeping distance.

An example of this is the Facebook group Covidiots UK : ‘’Naming, Shaming and general highlighting of people that can’t seem to stay at home. People that just can’t do as they have been clearly instructed to do. The smart arse’s, the ones that will do as they please, the Covid sunbathers….. The very people that put all of us at risk of making a very bad situation much much worse!’’ Not only Facebook is aware of Covidiots. The hashtag #COVIDIOTS on Twitter is very popular as well.

#Covidiots in the Twitterverse The authors

In this ‘Covidiot group’, people are ‘spotted’ wearing their face masks in a wrong way. They are called names. Then something unexpected happens: people in the comments choose side for the people wearing the mask the wrong way. This shows the ‘Covidiot shaming’ also has boundaries. Covidiot groups are created by people strongly following the ‘stay home’ behavioral scripts and are aimed to release irritation caused by people not obeying these scripts.

Groups like these originating around public opinions are not a coincidence. We are always included in a group, classification, genre and so on. Most groups we belong to by norms deriving from control and measurement: we don’t call ourselves ‘covidiots’ when we disagree with the corona-measurements taken by our government. The function of this ‘grouping’ is to detect risk, which is abnormality. This risk is the reason of people attaching moral judgments to very small details of behaviour.

''Covidiot'' Facebook groups The authors

Counter - groups

Within the group of Covidiots, there exists a small group  that the corona-crisis is made up to suppress citizens. Their mentality varies from ‘the government is overreacting’ to ‘it’s all a complot from the new world order to control us’.

The Dutch news reported about a woman named  “Nana”, who has no claim to any particular expertise and describes herself only as “a mother of two”. Nana was reported in the news, because her Facebook group about 5G and its correlation with the outbreak of the Coronavirus became the biggest anti 5G group on social media in a very short time. Meanwhile, fifteen telecom masts have been set on fire in the Netherlands.

She is not alone. Some groups are more concerned with radiation, poverty and capitalism, as they organise demonstrations against capitalism, for human rights and for freedom of the people. 

In , small minorities are actively protesting against the Corona measures, arguing the have gone too far. The ‘patriots’ wave the American flag and wear Tshirts saying ‘’Freedom Keeper’’. Others have been seen holding texts like ‘’Free hugs’’ and ‘’Faith over Fear’’.

In London, dozens of people got arrested for protesting against the Coronavirus lockdown in Hyde Park. They argue the virus is fake and ‘’Some of those present continued to promote the scientifically impossible conspiracy theory that the pandemic has been caused by the deployment of 5G masts.’’, Sky news reported.’’

Meanwhile in the counter - sphere The authors

These minorities receive a lot of criticism on both Facebook and Twitter.  discourse emerged as a counter – reaction to the Moralized Behavior Scripts, involving themes of freedom, suppression, anti – vaccine, patriotism and fake news.This group of people have their own news sources that criticize the mainstream ones. These news sources share the same ideas as the groups protesting against the lockdown. This group could be called Corona – sceptics.

The modern individual is even less free and autonomous than the modern individual Foucault wrote about in the twentieth century.

Freedom being a prominent theme in the counter – discourse is not a coincidence. The modern individual is even less free and autonomous than the modern individual Foucault wrote about in the twentieth century, especially when society feels it is at risk. The power structures securing normality and reducing risk have been highly advanced due to technological advancements. Algorithms track everything we do online and by means of our online connection we are tracible non-stop. 

pps are being developed These apps are supposed to help the health institutions to track down contacts of corona patient quicker and  in order to slow down infections. This is an example of instruments and norms for measuring. The function of these norms is to regulate behaviour (Blommaert, 2020). The Stay home groups can be regarded as a normative control which functions next to official institutions like the police and the government. Media play a role of normativity crusaders, showing the stay-home ideology as an objective fact. Keeping distance is now new but normal.

Conclusion

Data research on Twitter and Facebook point towards an immediate dichotomy in public opinion  the Corona pandemic. On the one hand, there’s the established ‘stay home movement’, who are in line with the ‘covidiot shamers’ to a certain degree. They are mainstream and represented in the general moralized behavioural scripts. On the other hand, there’s the Covidiots who ignore the rules of social distancing or who don’t believe in the existence of a Corona virus at all.

This dichotomy in public opinion shows that our moralized behavioural scripts have changed in an unprecedented speed and with unprecedented cultural ambiguit. People who do not act according to the new norms are considered losers and idiots: covidiots. People who do follow the rules imposed by the government and therefore stay at home, are considered heroes or at least supporters of the heroes who work in the hospitals taking care of the infected. Shaming the covidiots happens both in the digital and the physical public sphere. These communities, mostly called ‘’Covidiots’’, encourage people to stay home and shame those who don’t. By doing this, other people’s behaviour is measured and regulated, which is also done by official institutions.

Meanwhile the Corona sceptics on the far end on the Covidiot continuum are critical towards the people in power and try to influence this by criticizing the experts and regulations using other experts.

References

Blommaert, J. (2015). Language, behavioral scripts, and valuation: Comments on “Transnationalizing Chineseness” . accessed on May 8th [Online]  

Foucault, M. (2003)  Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1974–1975. London: Picador.

Youtube. (2020, May 1). Jan Blommaert on Abnormal - Life after Foucault [Video file]. Retreved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GKesakkus&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR32VmBhRlR8GdExIaSi8tlvmwpXuagFJ85NZ5VYwfFeC73bbcr1lvmQeY8