Dataset Information

Sociocultural impacts of COVID-19: A social representations perspective.

ABSTRACT: While COVID-19's public health and economic impacts are evident, its sociocultural impacts are often overlooked. This study takes the case of the Italian destination of Pisa during the early stages of the pandemic - when most infection cases were assumed to be imported from China - and investigates Social Representations of Chinese tourists from an Italian host perspective. Through fifteen interviews with local suppliers, two co-existing Social Representations are identified and expressed through Italian literary metaphors: "the Hen with Golden Eggs" and "the Anointer". This research shows that, while the dominant hegemonic representation is rooted in rationality, the emerging polemic representation is anchored in pre-Enlightenment sociocultural fears. Finally, the uncertain future of post-COVID19 tourism considering potential stereotypes, xenophobia and racism is discussed.

SUBMITTER: Wassler P

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8634773 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Sociocultural impacts of COVID-19: A social representations perspective.

Wassler Philipp P Talarico Chiara C

Tourism management perspectives 20210412

While COVID-19's public health and economic impacts are evident, its sociocultural impacts are often overlooked. This study takes the case of the Italian destination of Pisa during the early stages of the pandemic - when most infection cases were assumed to be imported from China - and investigates Social Representations of Chinese tourists from an Italian host perspective. Through fifteen interviews with local suppliers, two co-existing Social Representations are identified and expressed throug ...[more]

PMID: 34868835

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Project description:IntroductionAlthough one of the most prominent interventions against COVID-19, face masks seem poorly adopted by the general population. A growing body of literature has found that using face masks has social meaning. This qualitative study assessed the perceptions, representations and practices of mask wearing in the general population.MethodsA qualitative survey by short semi-structured walking interviews was carried out from April to December 2021 in 11 cities in France's Pays de la Loire region. Study locations were selected for their varied geographical, social, and economic characteristics, with urbanized and rural areas. Four domains linked to perceptions of masks and wearing them were explored: (i) evolution in mask wearing, (ii) decision-making methods for wearing and not wearing; (iii) incorporating the mask into way of life; (iv) projecting into the future.ResultsA total of 116 people were interviewed. Masks marked a shift from the ordinary world to the pandemic. Overall, interviewees considered masks an obstacle to breathing, communication, and social interactions, leading to establishing strategies circumventing the mask mandate. Poor attention was paid to their medical usefulness as an obligatory clothing accessory. Mask-wearing decisions were driven by social relations, common sense, and vulnerability. The greater the feeling of security (i.e., being with close relatives), the less it was worn or worn properly, with decreased attention to others and their health. Most participants did not remember learning to wear a mask. Some were convinced that mask-wearing could not be learned (experiential knowledge). Institutions (school and work) played a central role by facilitating incorporation of masks into daily life.ConclusionsThis study emphasizes the need to reinforce the individual medical values of face masks to prevent COVID-19. Ambitious education and training programmes should be planned to learn how and when to wear masks. Institutions (work and school) may be critical for this purpose.

Project description:BackgroundNurses are at the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, nurses have faced an elevated risk of exposure and have experienced the hazards related to a novel virus. While being heralded as lifesaving heroes on the front lines of the pandemic, nurses have experienced more physical, mental, and psychosocial problems as a consequence of the COVID-19 outbreak. Social media discussions by nursing professionals participating in publicly formed Facebook groups constitute a valuable resource that offers longitudinal insights.ObjectiveThis study aimed to explore how COVID-19 impacted nurses through capturing public sentiments expressed by nurses on a social media discussion platform and how these sentiments changed over time.MethodsWe collected over 110,993 Facebook discussion posts and comments in an open COVID-19 group for nurses from March 2020 until the end of November 2020. Scraping of deidentified offline HTML tags on social media posts and comments was performed. Using subject-matter expert opinions and social media analytics (ie, topic modeling, information retrieval, and sentiment analysis), we performed a human-in-a-loop analysis of nursing professionals' key perspectives to identify trends of the COVID-19 impact among at-risk nursing communities. We further investigated the key insights of the trends of the nursing professionals' perspectives by detecting temporal changes of comments related to emotional effects, feelings of frustration, impacts of isolation, shortage of safety equipment, and frequency of safety equipment uses. Anonymous quotes were highlighted to add context to the data.ResultsWe determined that COVID-19 impacted nurses' physical, mental, and psychosocial health as expressed in the form of emotional distress, anger, anxiety, frustration, loneliness, and isolation. Major topics discussed by nurses were related to work during a pandemic, misinformation spread by the media, improper personal protective equipment (PPE), PPE side effects, the effects of testing positive for COVID-19, and lost days of work related to illness.ConclusionsPublic Facebook nursing groups are venues for nurses to express their experiences, opinions, and concerns and can offer researchers an important insight into understanding the COVID-19 impact on health care workers.

Dataset Information

Sociocultural impacts of COVID-19: A social representations perspective.

Publications

Sociocultural impacts of COVID-19: A social representations perspective.

Similar Datasets

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