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A typology of social characters and various means of control: an analysis of communication during the early stages of the corona pandemic in Germany

ABSTRACT This paper argues that Covid-19 has produced a set of social characters during the corona crisis and that these characters represent different approaches toward control. Social characters emerge as constructs responding to current discourses. They may function as role models in uncertain times and offer orientation. The paper identifies such characters in communication on the online platform Jodel. It analyses and discusses the properties of the following social characters, which are reconstructed inductively from the data, classifying 156 Jodel posts into the following typology: the social worker, the crisis entrepreneur, the worried and depressed loner, the crisis manager, the admonisher, and the health expert. All these characters also display different approaches to how the crisis could be controlled. Some of them highlight economic discourses, others psychological discourses, and again others bureaucratic discourses. The analysis of the social characters and their approaches to control contributes to research on the role of discourses in modern European societies and on how these discourses contribute to different approaches to controlling a crisis.