Limit your body area -a COVID-19 mass radicalisation challenging autonomy and basic human rights

Limit your body area -a COVID-19 mass radicalisation challenging autonomy and basic human rights Stinne Glasdam, Sigrid Stjernswärd International Journal of Human Rights in Healthcare, Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print, pp.- This paper aims to explore articulations of how individuals internalise official demands on handling COVID-19 and the function of social media in this process, and further to discuss this from a human rights’ perspective. A thematic analysis of qualitative data from an international survey on COVID-19 and social media. The analysis was inspired by Berger and Luckmann's theory of reality as a social construction. Articulations expressed an instant internalisation and externalisation of the officially defined “new normal”. However, negotiations of this “new normal” were articulated, whereby everyday life activities could proceed. Resistance to the “new normal” appeared, as routines and common sense understandings of everyday life were threatened. Health-care professionals were put in a paradoxical situation, living in accordance with the “new normal” outside work and legitimately deviating from it at work. The “new normal” calls for individuals’ “oughtonomy” rather than autonomy. Social media were used to push individual’s re-socialisation into the “new normal”. The latter both promoted and challenged human rights as the individual's right to self-determination extends beyond the...
Source: International Journal of Human Rights in Healthcare - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Source Type: research