For the German interviews, it will certainly be possible to differentiate by gender as we have given each respondent a gendered pseudonym.
I’ll ask @Djan to do the German pandemic context - as he lived through it! Djan, can I add this to your To Do list?
Sure, but beware small numbers. I fear we end up with random noise that looks like information. Basically, our corpus is now being considered as being divided by:
That means having 1 (forum, only in English, simplest case) + 3 x 2 x 4 = 25 different subdivisions. That means the average number of interviews per group is going to be too small to make any sense for all but the most macroscopic anomalies.
Networks based on small groups of people are almost sure to diverge, because people are different. But I don’t see how we can claim that those divergences are attributable to inter-group cultural differences, as opposed to intra-group ones. What is your view on this?
The expected difference between any two individual within the same group (say, two German speakers) is larger than the expected difference between the (abstract) representatives of two different groups (say, the “representative German speaker” vs. the “representative Polish speaker”).
Let me make a one-dimensional example: imagine that the distribution of the height of the entire population of German speakers is represented by the pink curve, and that of Polish speaker by the blue curve. If you pick two points at random below at least one of the two curves, you are very likely to pick them in the shaded area, where they could equally belong to either group. The averages (the middle point of each curve) are still different, but in order to know that you need to measure the height of a whole lot of people, not just a few.
Hey Nica, would you like us to provide sources for the 800-100 word backgrounder as well?
jepp!
That sounds great to me:)) when it comes to genders @Nica in both Polish and Czech context, we use gendered pseudonyms too. When it comes to income, I think we could do class estimates, very rough ones, plus country vs small town vs midsize town vs big cities and education levels.
Yes please!
@alberto – I was thinking it would be great to have gendered graphs of just the interview folks – that would be 55 and 59 for the Czech and Polish pre-war cases, and I know it’s less for Germany so maybe it would make less sense for that one. My assumption at least for Poland and the Czech Republic given the countries involved would be that most people would self-identify as one of the two genders, not four (but that’s an empirical question – @Maniamana and @jitka.kralova can tell us).
In terms of the points you raise:
I actually think it would be interesting to have a visualization of all the data just aggregated by gender (so, across all three countries). I don’t know what it would yield, but it would be interesting to see – if we had visualizations by country, by gender, and then perhaps by both.
Ultimately, I think whether or not it’s going to yield something relevant will depend on what the data shows. Here is how I was thinking about it – given that some of the topics/codes are definitely “gendered” (re-traditionalization of gender, childcare), it would be interesting to see how they show up on visualizations. So (just as a hypothetical example), let’s take “childcare” (which is one of the codes). Let’s say in @Maniamana 's sample (which comprises a total of 59 pre-war interviews) there are 30 women and 29 men (again, purely hypothetical, as everything about this example is). Now, let’s say that 80% of the women appear to link “childcare” with “disappointment” but only 50% of men do – that is interesting to me. Yes, the size sample is small, but I did a very basic check and a scenario like that would still be statistically significant:
Even if something emerges as an inconclusive but potentially interesting trend, that would still be worthwhile to me, as it could be noted and included in the conclusion/discussion section of the final report.
It’s kind of interesting, because the underlying idea is that being of different gender is like living in a different country (from an arbitrary baseline). Which is true, I guess.
There is a lot of interesting work in anthropology, sociology, and gender studies on “gender cultures” and genderlects that definitely speaks to that point.
BACKGROUNDER FOR (EASTERN) GERMANY
General trajectory and government response
It is not easy to provide a concise and coherent overview of all anti-pandemic measures in Germany. One of the central cleavages between the central government and the states was how to adequately respond to the Coronavirus. Should there be a central, unified approach or tailor-made, regional regulations aimed at curbing the spread of the virus? And like in all other countries, communication with the public during a constantly evolving and highly complex situation affecting almost all areas of life, proved to be extremely difficult.
Constitutionally, health policy in Germany is “Ländersache” (responsibility of federal states). Chancellor Merkel and her health minister Jen Spahn had to come to agreement with 16 different state governors. This time-consuming “horse trading” created notable frustration and dents in the public’s perception regarding policy makers’ ability to tackle the pandemic; a pandemic that didn’t care about state borders. While various laws and regulations were passed on the central government level, they were often tied to fluctuating case numbers, rates of hospitalization, and availability of intensive care hospital beds on the regional level.
These indicators differed from state to state, which led to a lot of confusion, most notably during cross-border travel. In general one can state that while there were overarching principles such as social distancing, mask mandates, closing of shops, no two states had the exact same lockdown measures in place and the ability to enforce those measures also varied substantially.
An example of diverging Corona regulations between central government and states
Source:Corona: Diese Regelungen gelten ab 2. November
There were two main “hard lockdowns” in Germany (22 March- 4 May 2022, 16 December- 10 January). But throughout the pandemic the government adapted measures according to shifting infection rates. From August 2021 onwards Germany implemented what is referred to as the "3G Regel” (geimpft, getestet, genesen). This regulation requires people who enter public and private buildings to be either vaccinated, have recently recovered from Covid-19, or tested negative for the virus within 24 hours.
Cultural Climate around Covid: Conspiracy myths’ driven populism
Since the research focus of the project for Germany revolves around the “ Neue Bundesländer”- the former GDR states (including almost all of the semi-structured interviews) this brief overview mostly highlights developments, movements, narratives in those regions, especially in Saxony
While Germany was lauded internationally for curbing the spread of the Coronavirus initially, wide-spread resistance against lockdown measures and public health advice, anti-elite agitation against scientists and policy makers increasingly intensified. This was especially true in the eastern Bundesländer, where the AFD managed to sow populist discontent against the central government reminiscent of PEGIDA in 2014, thus using the pandemic to bolster its profile.
Heterogeneous groups composed of ‘anti-vaxxers,’ far-right groups, new age spiritualists, conspiracy theorists, gathered to protest state authority and elites. The fervor of their opposition manifested itself most notably in the attempt to storm the German Bundestag in August 2020, but also in various gatherings and protest marches (often 10000-50000) that violated lockdown measures. Many identify as freedom fighters defending their constitutional rights, and in extreme cases view themselves as victims of a freedom-eroding, autocratic state – a state they compare to the Third Reich. this self-victimization and the accusation that fascist tyranny is being imposed on ironically often go hand-in-hand with the propagation of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic Coronavirus conspiracy theories (QAnon, Reichsbürger, Querdenken, SHAEF etc.).
In Saxony, The AFD managed to successfully frame Merkel’s government as unlawful and tyrannical, evoking memories and drawing parallels to the pre-unification era and the socialist regime. By framing lockdowns, mask mandates, and later vaccine regulations as externally imposed measures the far right party instrumentalized and deepened socio-political grievances in the East. It is remarkable that the AFD in eastern Bundesländer managed to flip a 70 year old script on vaccinations by framing vaccinations as an illiberal and freedom robbing tool imposed by a power hungry central government. Historically, vaccinations were compulsory and highly organized in East Germany, whereas they were often voluntary in West Germany. Furthermore, anti-vaccine beliefs were more prominent in the West. This has now changed, as there is positive correlation between voting for AFD and being unvaccinated, and regions that have the most unvaccinated citizens are AFD strongholds.
In late February 2021, a new political movement and party emerged in Saxony. The “Freie Sachsen” (Free Saxonians) have organized dozens of protest marches and have the largest Saxony focused Telegram group (ca 150000 members). The leadership consists of former Neonazis and other far right agitators. The goal of the Freie Sachsen, according to its website, is to end Berlin’s stranglehold on Saxonian socio-historical identity, including anti-lockdown measures and other Corona related activities. Saxony’s CDU Minister Michael Kretschmer is depicted as a West German illegitimate leader, defending Berlin’s and not Saxony’s interests (see image below)
Source: https://twitter.com/freiesachsen_/status/1457104389903106052
The German government has responded by nudging Facebook to delete several conspiracy groups on Facebook. This has hampered the ability to reach out to potential respondents online, because a) some of the observed spaces don’t exist anymore, b) there is an additional layer of mistrust and c) because most populist social media groups have pivoted to Telegram. General themes that became evident in conducted interviews were feelings of being abandoned and/or not represented by policy makers, financial insecurity, detrimental impact of social isolation, general confusion of lockdown measures, and distrust of scientists and the media.
Sources:
https://efbi.de/files/efbi/pdfs/2022-0-EFBI_DigitalReport_final.pdf
Querdenken: the German anti-lockdown movement that thrives on public distrust | LSE COVID-19 )
https://www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/reichstag-berlin-sturm-fakenews-101.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/world/europe/reichstag-germany-neonazi-coronavirus.html)
https://www.rnd.de/politik/forsa-umfrage-zwei-drittel-der-ungeimpften-sind-afd-oder-die-basis-waehler-RF6VGZ67VJHC7AKWC2AL2PZ3X4.html
https://www.zeit.de/digital/internet/2021-09/facebook-loescht-konten-und-gruppen-der-querdenken-bewegung
https://verfassungsblog.de/querdenker-suspension-fb/
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/05/anti-vaccination-germany-anti-semitism/618777/
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/corona-regeln-november-103.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2015/jan/06/pegida-what-does-german-far-right-movement-actually-stand-for
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45282065
https://www.dw.com/en/covid-german-politicians-scientists-face-threats-online/a-56589911
https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/coronavirus/chronik-coronavirus.html
@Richard – this is really great, very good overview / context. Would you mind please adding a section (paragraph or so) making more explicit how this context informed strategies, experiences, and limitations of gathering ethnographic data for Germany – not methodology per se (that will be its own section, of course), but more like – how did this shape the research design and arc of the research for the German case. Thank you!
Sure
@Maniamana @jitka.kralova @Richard @Djan – could I please ask you to upload your “Covid context” texts to the project drive, so we have it all in one place please?
Thanks!
Nica
will do.