Mobilizing During the Covid-19 Pandemic: From Democratic Innovation to the Political Weaponization of Disinformation

Abstract

Political scholars express concern for the continued resilience of democracy in the face of multiple crises. In times of crisis, social movements articulate grievances and make demands of political leaders and policymakers. In contrast to the wave of pro-democracy movements following the 2008 global financial crash where protesters demanded accountability from elites, mobilization during the COVID-19 pandemic has defied expectations in several key ways. First, the expectation for protesters to mobilize primarily online in the face of the restrictions and risk associated with large gatherings has not been upheld. Instead, we have witnessed widespread “offline” mass protests. Second, despite high mortality rates and significant disparities in the effectiveness of national public health responses, we have not witnessed widespread mobilizations demanding governments do better to protect citizens from the virus. Instead, we have seen two radically different responses: At one extreme, veterans of “pro-democracy” movements have “pivoted,” using their skills and experience to either make up for weak government responses to COVID-19 (Hong Kong) or to reinforce government efforts to contain it (Taiwan). At the other extreme, “antidemocratic” and predominantly far right-wing movements have mobilized against public health measures, circulating COVID negationist and conspiracy messages. Indeed, the political weaponization of disinformation has been a notable feature of pandemic mobilization. I analyze these contrasting trends, highlighting the challenges they pose for the effective handling of the pandemic, and their broader implications for democratic legitimacy and resilience. In so doing, I call attention to the ways that mobilization during the pandemic challenges scholars to revisit some of our assumptions about the dynamics of social movements in times of crisis, and how they can foster or erode democracy. The analysis also suggests that scholars analyzing the impact of information disorders on democracy need to pay careful attention to offline protest as well as online transmission.

Universal threads: Shared sociopolitical roots and consequences of extrasensory perception and pseudoscientific beliefs

“…Yelbuz et al, 2022) and actively open minded thinking (e.g., Knežević et al, 2024), but positively to intuitive thinking style (e.g., Svedholm & Lindeman, 2012). Not only that but those prone to irrational beliefs are more likely to exhibit a more disheveled thinking style, reflected in the endorsement of contradictory beliefs (Petrović & Žeželj, 2021;2024) and to erroneously attribute different life outcomes to chance (Branković, 2019).…”

The Spatial Structures in the Austrian COVID-19 Protest Movement: A Virtual and Geospatial User Network Analysis

“…The Austrian COVID-19 protest movement stood out due to its broad and heterogeneous mobilization in the Austrian population (Brunner et al 2021) and also showed pronounced similarities to the COVID-19 protest movements in the two German-speaking neighboring countries of Switzerland and Germany (Nachtwey et al 2020). On the other hand, research suggests that US protest movements originating in right wing groups against the "plandemic" spread via social media communities to Europe (Fominaya 2022). In order to understand these regional, national and transnational digital embeddings of the Austrian COVID-19 protest movement, our study contributes an extensive spatial-social network analysis for a Twitter user network of protest actors.…”

“…Some researchers proclaimed the "death of geography" (Bates 1999) in the early days of broad accessibility to the Internet, a theory that would render geospatial distance irrelevant due to the closeness in virtual space. Yet during the COVID-19 pandemic, activists still connected digitally and across borders with local, regional, national and international movement partners, organizing protest and negotiating political claims (Fominaya 2022). This created a virtual network structure in social media as well as a spatial structure according to the users' physical locations.…”

COVID-19 y participación ciudadana local en España: evaluación desde la perspectiva de responsables municipales y miembros de consejos consultivos

“…https://www.imf.org/es/Publications/WEO Becerril-Viera, Isabel / Pasadas-del-Amo, Sara COVID-19 y participación ciudadana local en España: evaluación desde la perspectiva de responsables municipales y miembros... Iglesias-Alonso, 2020). En este nuevo contexto, la participación política, desde formas de participación más tradicionales, como las sesiones parlamentarias o la protesta (Fominaya, 2024), hasta mecanismos, como los presupuestos participativos o los consejos consultivos, vieron afectado su funcionamiento a causa de la crisis sanitaria.…”