Mental Maps and Narratives of the Safe and Unsafe During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract (English)

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, regulations and restrictions were introduced between March 2020 and March 2022 by governments around the world, including mask-wearing and vaccination. In some cases of professional context or in the administration’s response to Environmental Health Crisis in particular geographical locations, these were mandatory measures, i.e., workers were mandated to get vaccinated or lose their jobs. Perceived public pressure to get vaccinated or face serious consequences fuelled conspiracy theories of various kinds, including the conspiracy theory that the MRNA vaccination is intended to change DNA for nefarious purpose or part of a plot to depopulate the planet. Conspiracy theories hold that evil agents conspire secretly to control, or gain control over, a region, a nation, or the world (Butter and Reinkowski, 2014). The Covid-19 pandemic itself, and associated public health response measures, gave rise to various conspiracy theories proliferating on social media where there is often a collective framing of narratives and worldviews (Zollo et al., 2017), such that governments or elite esoteric groups are colluding to create a new world order using global vaccination and vaccine passports as a vehicle to implement a new system of digital surveillance. This paper provides an overview of prominent conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 pandemic, and specifically Covid-19-related vaccination programmes, and the types of mental mapping of the local and the global that can be observed in such ways of thinking. Vernacular beliefs and practices formed during the “anti-vax movement” in decision-making processes on inoculation, and associated understanding of health and risk (Kitta, 2012), gained momentum in connection with the Covid-19 vaccination programmes. Fears, doubts and cognitive biases (Carpentras, Lueders and Quayle, 2022) about this specific vaccination were expressed through rumour and story (Lee, 2014). Breakdowns in communication between medical and scientific communicators of public health advice and vernacular understandings of disease and contagion (Kitta, 2020) meant that fear and rumour abounded. This communication breakdown was sometimes manipulated in political rhetoric. This paper examines narrative patterns and mental mapping found in mass media and political discourse around Covid-19 using examples from the Irish and British context. The emergence of terms and phrases such as “pandemic of the unvaccinated” (Kampf, 2021) led to the creation of mind maps around “safe” and “unsafe” spaces (Covid 19 Mind Maps) as well as “safe” (vaccinated) and “unsafe” (unvaccinated) people both in political discourse and mass media. The interplay of different kinds of mental mapping in relation to navigating the world safely during Covid-19 pandemic times is briefly addressed in this overview.