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

The corona crisis reached Germany in late January 2020, when the first infections with the virus were detected. The pandemic became the predominant issue in the media and politicians struggled to develop a proper strategy to deal with the crisis. However, perceptions of the crisis and of the political decision-making are very diverse and people are searching for ideas and suggestions for how the pandemic could be controlled. The paper argues that during the pandemic, a set of new or newly adapted social characters emerged and that these characters introduce 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. Each of these characters also takes a different approach toward control that relates to both the crisis and to people's behavior. The analysis of these characters contributes to research on how control is established based on different discourses in uncertain times.

The paper analyzes two different stages of the pandemic. During the first stage, the introduction of restrictions and their perception played a prominent role until the peak of restrictions was reached. Right from the start, large events were canceled. When COVID-19 spread and finally reached pandemic stage, restrictions on travelling were imposed, non-essential stores had to close, and the government announced far-ranging limitations on physical contacts. In late April and early May, Germany reached the maximum restrictions on social contacts and political regulation of social life. In early May, there were protests against the restrictions in various cities. At this time, the government's way of dealing with Covid-19 changed and the second stage of the corona crisis in Germany began when the government started loosening the restrictions. On May 4, the federal state Saxony-Anhalt, which had only very few cases, was the first to start re-opening and removing some restrictions. This marks the start of the re-opening phase during which the German federal states proceeded at different speeds and stepwise allowed more physical contacts. Finally, at the end of June many cohorts of pupils returned to school, many sports and much travel were permitted as long as people follow the remaining restrictions on social distancing etc.

The corona crisis, like any major crisis, is clearly having a deep social impact in terms of new concerns and feelings of vulnerability (Bude 2018), producing new experts and reconfiguring the power of discourses (Foucault 2002 [1969]). Due to the scale of the crisis, this research argues that it produces a new set of social characters or reinterprets existing ones. But what are social characters?

Moebius and Schroer (2010) describe social characters in the introduction of their edited volume as ideal types of communicative figures and role models that are present in a society and that are reproduced by people on different occasions. They define social characters as temporally bound historical figures. Social characters often arise from one societal field, but as social characters, they diffuse into different societal spheres and become characteristic for appearances, presentations and self-presentations in a society at a certain moment in time. Moebius and Schroer (2010: 8; and also Baecker 2010) give the example of a manager. On the one hand a manager is a professional, but as such he is not a social character. However, in free market economies the role of a manager diffused into many societal spheres and represents a particular type of appearance, of perceiving and interpreting a situation and also acting. In this reading, the discursive dimension of social characters becomes visible. Discourses have the power to define how people interpret certain events, subjects, and objects through an implicit grammar and vocabulary (Bröckling 2015; Foucault 2002 [1969]; Seidenschnur et al. 2019) at a certain time. Therefore, the character of a manager can be recognized and reproduced in very different contexts, be it in the literature, in the family, peer-groups or in the business sector. This illustrates how Moebius and Schroer (2010) elaborate the concept of social characters as discursive figures that emerge from powerful discourses at a time and become a characteristic figure of that contemporary society (Moebius and Schroer 2010: 8). Such social characters can disappear, when the power of discourse decreases or they can adapt to new discourses. By analyzing social characters and how they are discursively produced, Moebius and Schroer further the understanding of discourses. They reconstruct and analyze cultural beliefs, routines and myths perpetuated in discourses at a specific point in time in society (before the pandemic).

The concept of social characters has its origins in a specific German sociological debate. Yet, as the concept has proven useful and fruitful, this study also intends to introduce the concept and its empirical study to an international audience. It is not only interesting for research on sociological discourse analysis (Keller 2007), but also for research on group mentalities (Feldt 2010). This research field is well established in the international literature and could profit from the concept of social characters and the other way around. Such research is ‘interested in real representative characters, existing groups of people with coherent and relatively stable attitudes and values’ (Klicperová-Baker and Koštál 2015). Research on group mentalities and on social characters share underlying assumptions such as an emphasis on the importance of time-specific and discursive frame conditions. They focus both on ideal types and concrete characters, looking for ‘constellations of meaningful and relatively steady attitudes, values, and behavioral tendencies’ (Klicperová-Baker and Koštál 2015: 7) that appear within these frame conditions (see also Moebius and Schroer 2010: 8). With regard to the transnational meaning of the findings, research on social characters can connect to research on group mentalities that have analyzed how some mentalities are shared transnationally (Klicperová-Baker and Koštál 2015: 23). Therefore, this study argues that the concept of social characters is not only useful for discourse theorists but it can also contribute to and learn from other approaches that are present in the international discussion for instance research on group mentalities.

Thereby, one has to keep in mind that social figures often relate to professional roles (the manager or the consultant) but they can also refer to nonprofessionals (the diva or the stranger). Social characters can be taken as a role model for individuals. However, by analyzing social characters this study does not refer to roles, because analyzing roles means not only to analyze how individuals adopt different roles but also to make visible the expectations towards these roles and how these expectations are negotiated in interactions (Merton 1957). The paper does not focus on such processes. Instead, it follows Moebius and Schroer's (2010: 9) approach to bring some order into the social system by identifying social characters and constructing a glossary that reconstructs different opportunities to describe others during the pandemic and to present the self in terms of ideal types.

This study analyzes how such social characters were produced by people in online communication during the corona crisis. The corona crisis is a potential moment of change that adds new social characters and reinterprets old ones, since the power of discourses shifts and new discourses emerge along with different needs and anxieties in the society. Since social characters are products of these changing discourses, they provide different concerns about losing control and approaches to controlling a crisis. The loss of control can be described differently and reasoned by different developments and effects. On the topic of control in times of crisis, Cohen (1973) tells us that during a crisis the perception of losing control and panic occurs in different stages and leads to responses from different societal actors to control the situation. When a threat is identified, media interest increases and reports rouse public concerns. Governments and policymakers have to respond to the threat, and panic about the issue results in societal changes based on new perceptions of the situation. Research shows that digital platforms and communications constitute significant targets, facilitators, and instruments of panic production among the general public (Walsh 2020). Digital platforms can intensify collective alarm and offer spaces for individuals to share their perception of the situation – be it with regard to losing control or gaining control over the pandemic. This research analyzes how different social characters play a significant role in people's communication about the crisis and analyzes how these characters offer different approaches to growing concerns or controlling the situation.

In order to identify social characters, this study focuses on online communication in the app ‘Jodel’, a social networking platform used for anonymous communication with people in the same region. It analyses 156 Jodel posts from two regions in Germany out of a sample of 212 Jodels with a content that gives information on attitudes, interpretative patterns, and often behavioral tendencies.

A ‘Jodel’ is a short message by an app user that can be read by other users in the same region. Each message has a limit of approximately 175 characters. Other users can rate the message or react to it. Jodel was founded in 2014 and is especially used by young people. In 2018, the app reached more than one million users in Germany according to its founder Alessio Borgmeyer (Borgmeyer 2019) and is one of the rising social media platforms besides the big four: Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp and Instagram.

Jodels are different from other online messages. They are more anonymous compared to blogs and messages on Facebook or Instagram, since no information is provided on the user's name and profile. People share their point of view and discuss, but remain more anonymous. The anonymity of Jodlers is only limited with two regards. First, information is given about the distance to your location (for instance by the categorizations ‘nearby’ or ‘far’ or the name of the city where the Jodler is located – but this information does not permit identification of the Jodler). Second, the original Jodler of a message to which other Jodlers react is marked throughout the conversation by the letters ‘OJ’ and if one Jodler reacts in different messages on the original Jodel it is marked that it's the same author. But again, it is not possible to identify this person in other Jodels and conversations on other Jodels. Additional information about users must be actively provided by the users in the message and that did not happen in the Jodels collected regarding the pandemic. An example of how Jodels look can be seen on the homepage of Jodel (https://jodel.com/). The comparatively high level of anonymity for authors makes the messages on Jodel an interesting data source, because it can be expected that people are less concerned about voicing their opinions, even if they may not be politically correct. Nevertheless, the data are limited since Jodel is primarily used by younger people and it would be very interesting for future research to test to what extent the social characters identified on Jodel are represented in the same way or differently on other platforms. The data are also interesting in comparison to comments on newspaper articles in online newspapers; the authors of the Jodels determine the content more directly since they are not routed by the content of a report.

For this research, data were collected from two regions in Germany: Southern Bavaria and northern Hesse. The final area covered within these regions cannot be determined exactly since Jodel covers a larger area when fewer Jodels are posted at a user's location and a smaller area when more Jodels are posted at a user's location. Furthermore, Jodel claims to be hyperlocal as concept between global diffusion and local roots. Jodel stays local with regard to the region from which you receive messages but is also used in many countries around the world. Users can see Jodels from and contribute Jodels to in the region where they are from and the region where they are. With regard to the data it means that messages can be seen by residents who live in a region (even if they are currently away) as well as by visitors who are in that region only for a limited time.

The paper further differentiates between the periods but not between the regions. Jodels are differentiated according to whether they were posted during the first stage of the shutdown with increasing restrictions (March until end of April) or the second stage when these rules were loosened (beginning of May until June 2020, see also Bundesgesundheitsministerium 2020). It analyzes Jodels from different authors and therefore reconstructs social characters from Jodels that are posted by different people presenting themselves in a similar manner.

The data from the app was coded according to Mayring's (2014) concept of qualitative content analysis using an inductive coding strategy in two steps. First, 212 potentially classifiable Jodels were identified in the communication on Jodel. Within these Jodels, the most common social characters were identified (in 156 out of the 212 Jodels). Second, the attitudes, interpretative patterns, and behavioral tendencies of these characters were analyzed as well as their presence during the two periods.

In the first step, the coding considered most of the Jodels that were posted during the relevant period in the two selected regions. Jodel users can communicate in different channels. Each channel discusses a preselected issue. One of the top issues is ‘@ corona’ (in October 2020 the channel ‘@ corona’ has 2,683 followers in Kassel, the largest city in northern Hesse and 38,970 followers in Munich, the largest city in southern Bavaria). I collected the Jodels from this channel in both regions. However, there is also communication on the pandemic outside of this channel. I tried to identify and analyze these additional Jodels that were relevant for this study and not written in the specific channel even though some messages may have gotten lost given the amount of data. This larger sample was used to identify Jodels which include information on attitudes, interpretative patterns, and if applicable behavioral tendencies. 212 Jodels contained potentially relevant information. Within this sample, the most common social characters were identified. The initial open coding focused on attitudes towards the corona crisis, how people described the pandemic and opinions about how people should behave during the pandemic. Hence, the characteristics of the social characters are drawn from the Jodels that refer to the crisis.

After identifying potential social characters, the second coding step focused on the six most common social characters drawn from the first coding step which could be identified in 156 of the 212 potentially relevant Jodels. As a result, the paper draws on 101 Jodels during the first stage and 55 Jodels during the second stage of the pandemic. These messages discuss current events during the corona crisis and contain information on how social characters are discursively (re)produced during the crisis. After identifying the social characters from a larger sample in an ongoing process, we coded the 156 remaining messages in more detail, analyzed their characteristics, and compared the resulting social characters with pre-existing social characters in German society described by Moebius and Schroer (2010). This approach yielded a set of social characters, which, on the one hand, includes pre-existing social characters that have been adapted to the new discursive landscape. On the other hand, we identified social characters that have become visible because of the new discourses empowered by the pandemic. Our approach also demonstrates how the development of the pandemic influences the presence of different social characters. Nevertheless, the original sample included information on further potential social characters, such as the ‘Political Protester’, who argues against restrictions introduced by politicians by supporting broader antiestablishment discourses, or the ‘Invulnerable’, who do believe that virus exists but considers themselves without any health risk and supports a hedonistic lifestyle during the crisis. These potential characters only appeared in very few Jodels. However, it may very well be that such potential characters are present on other stages and this research is limited with regard to the empirical sources.

The content analysis and classification yielded a typology of six social characters, their incidence at the early and late period of the first wave differed. The typology included the character of the social worker, the crisis entrepreneur, the worried and depressed loner, the crisis manager, the admonisher and the health expert.

The social character of the social worker highlights the readiness to care for others in times of corona. They do social work and care for other citizens as ‘clients’ according to the values of citizenship, solidarity and reciprocity (Dominelli 2004). The idea of solidarity and care is related to social groups that have been hard hit by the crisis: ‘Why are the homeless not being put into houses. We need solidarity but we leave thousands in the streets’ (CWW5). In other cases, the social worker cares for groups that carry special responsibilities and risks: ‘Is anyone working in hospitals or nursing. I have sewn masks and would like to donate them’ (CWW8). Interestingly, the social worker shows a lot of solidarity with strangers: ‘Good Morning. If anybody needs anything – let me know. I will get it for you’ (CWW5); ‘Please also offer your help offline. Put up notes in hallways or in post boxes to also reach older people’ (CWW6). Hence, this social character emphasizing solidarity is mainly a collective one in times of corona. One reason for this collective orientation, as opposed to showing more solidarity with family and friends, may be that the social worker takes the government's recommendation very seriously not to meet with their own parents due to the risk of infection: ‘I would love to visit my family at home and not to hang out alone. But I would have a bad conscience in this situation #stayhome’ (CWW2). There are also examples in which businesses portray themselves as social workers: ‘Now it counts. We support the delivery of pharmaceuticals, groceries, and food. Use our rental cars for free’ (CWW9).

Regarding timing, the social character of the social worker is predominantly present on Jodel during the phase of restrictions. The later we look at the communication; the fewer people describe themselves as social workers. Regarding control, the communication on solidarity and collectivity is considered the key concept in producing control. Even though people are unable to avoid infection, solidarity and collectivity are highlighted as concepts that buffer the consequences of the crisis.

The crisis entrepreneur is a social character with a different approach to the crisis. An entrepreneur can be described as a ‘hustler who sees opportunity where others see obstacles’ (Stamm et al. 2019: 8). For instance, an IT company had excess space in their facilities and tried to rent offices to exhausted parents in home office: ‘Sent into Home Office and kids at home? We know your problems. We offer a clean office with high hygiene standards for little money’ (CE9). Or private tutors for school students moving their business online faster than schools and trying to expand in this way: ‘More than ever. The Learning-Studio [name of the studio] won't leave you alone during this difficult time. See the advantages of our private lessons in our virtual classrooms’ (CE12). The social character of the crisis entrepreneur highlights what Bröckling (2015) calls an entrepreneurial self. The two previous examples demonstrated this perspective with regard to the business field. However, Jodlers also try to establish entrepreneurial models for aspects of social life: ‘Quarantine dates via skype. Let's develop a success model and collect our ideas’ (CE 2). In societal discourses, entrepreneurs have been characterized as individuals who push forward innovative ideas, take on risks and strive to increase wealth or profit (Bröckling 2015), even before corona. During the corona crisis, this social character is still searching for such ideas but under different circumstances.

The crisis entrepreneur is especially present at the start of restrictions on social and economic life and looking for ways to take action. This is not surprising, since there have always been more entrepreneurs when the pressure to change practices is high (Schumpeter 1934). In the second stage of the crisis, this social character is no longer very visible. Their approach to controlling the situation is creativity and the search for opportunities while others lose hope. Therefore, the crisis entrepreneur establishes control over the crisis by buffering its economic consequences through creativity.

The social character of the worried and depressed loner is very different from the crisis entrepreneur. While the crisis entrepreneur discursively includes a heroic emphasis, the worried and depressed loner is discursively signified by emotional communication: ‘I feel like a prison inmate who walks his rounds in the inner courtyard, when I walk around’ (DI2). Emotional communication often involves others in the chatrooms: ‘What can I do not to feel lonely’ (DI3); ‘In my case all the psychological stress starts to have physical consequences. I’m a totally frightened person anyway. Does anyone else have the same problem and found a way to deal with it?’ (DI 6). Hence, the worried and depressed loner is a social character that is willing to provide information on their emotional status and to strangers. He has the feeling that he has lost control over the situation. Usually, the worried and depressed loner finds people trying to give some support: ‘I’m so afraid. I don't want all this. I don't see how there could be a positive way out of this’. Answer 1: Feel yourself hugged’. (DI7); ‘Anyone else here with almost no social contacts for ages? I can't bear it any longer’. Answer 1: ‘Same here. Let's make the best of it’. Answer 2: ‘We can chat altogether if you want’ (DI5). However, mental illnesses have always been a product of different discourses (Foucault 2003 [1963]) and in the case of the pandemic, depressed sentiments are somehow normalized. They are explained by the lack of social contact and support is given to the worried and depressed loner. Hence, the worried and depressed loner is an example of expressing the loss of control over the situation compared to the other social figures. However, communicating loss of control induces others to respond and affirm worried and depressed loners of their support and their place in society. Therefore, the worried and depressed loner shares a discourse that engages him in as part of a group and motivates Jodlers to provide support, which works as a reassurance system during the crisis. Control is established through the reassurance of support from others.

The crisis manager is a social character that claims to take the right decisions or to have knowledge about which decision should be taken (Brunsson 2006: 179): ‘I prepare to keep a clear head and see how I can deal with the situation’ (CM3). In the data, we can see plenty of examples in which crisis managers calculate decisions. These calculations refer for instance to individual decision-making during the shut-down: ‘I decided to spend less money for living expenses and buy more stocks’ (CM6). But they can also directly calculate how the government should act in the crisis: ‘It's stupid to let the economy run into a brick wall in order to give priority to the fight against a virus that does not even have a high lethality’ (CM17). The management of options includes comparisons of countries that chose different strategies: ‘Why don't we do it like Sweden, the risk groups are in quarantine while the others continue like before’ (CM7). And the crisis manager addresses third parties: ‘We have had regulations for contacts between people since Monday. Today is Wednesday and people are calling for loosening these regulations. Please be patient and look to China. The infection rate is rising again’ (CM10). During the later stages of the corona crisis, the crisis manager often starts to place more emphasis on economic concerns and argues that it is time to take back some restrictions in order to restart the economy: ‘Look at the automotive industry. The order books were full. They still are. The restrictions go way too far and the taxpayer will pay for it’. (CM22); ‘One can try to keep up the restrictions but that's only going to ruin people's livelihoods. What they are doing is not a healthy middle course’ (CM25). The social character of the crisis manager evaluates situations and calculates risks. The crisis manager highlights their role as decision-maker and as a manager of knowledge and options. This character again implies different communication about how the corona crisis can be controlled. Control is established by having individuals with responsibility able to find the best way for dealing with the problems and minimizing the consequences as far as possible.

Another social character that appears during corona is the ‘admonisher’. This social character has the feeling that control over the situation has been lost. In order to reestablish control, the admonisher highlights the importance of following the rules and can be characterized by their acceptance and enhancement of legal-rational authority (Weber 1922). He acts as a partner of the political measures and approaches, including prioritizing the health discourse over economic discourses. The admonisher expresses his concerns with different strategies, for instance referring to especially perplexing and alarming examples: ‘In France a sixteen year old girl died from Corona. She had no pre-existing illnesses … ’ (A1). Discussing the dangers of COVID-19, the admonisher enforces control by following the rules and reproaching others who break them: ‘I went to the grocery store and was so horrified by the people. Nobody adhered to the minimum prescribed distance’ (A2); ‘It's unbelievable. I only go out if I have to and in the supermarket people elbow their way through. I would be so easy to follow the rules!’ (A5).

Another issue is the restrictions on family visits and again this plays back in the role of the admonisher: ‘Why are there still so many people visiting their families and friends – I really don't understand them’ (A 15). Based on such observations, they express their concerns about the future: ‘Next week, when it gets warmer, we will have a huge problem at the latest. Just look how frivolous people are already this week’ (A 18). While they supported restrictions on physical contacts at the start, they are highly concerned about removing these restrictions in the second stage. This can be accompanied by accusing the government of rating economic interests higher than health issues: ‘I don't understand how people can be so short-sighted to think the whole thing is over and restart the economy. Another lockdown will come’ (A 25). Therefore, the admonisher's approach to controlling the crisis can be characterized by two things: their empowerment through medical discourses and their support for legal-rational arguments.

Finally, the social character of the health expert represents in online communication what virologists are in the mainstream media. During the corona crisis, the health expert claims to possess advanced knowledge about the virus and the pandemic but also to be familiar with the latest trends and research results (Abrahamson 1996). For instance, regarding the utility of wearing masks, which is especially difficult in German culture because people traditionally consider it rather impolite to hide their face: ‘To translate it for the anti-altruistic people. Masks make a difference. They protect others and if everybody wears ones they will protect you (HE1). In other cases one can see how health experts claim to have insights into new interpretations and research on the corona virus: ‘To everyone who cannot deal with numbers. Minutephysiks published a video that explains the numbers right’ (HE3); ‘I suggest the current video ‘Corona is starting now’ from mailab. It sheds light on some misapprehensions and really analyzes the situation scientifically’ (HE10). The health expert also uses this knowledge to interpret the situation and to explain it to others: ‘Until April 20th they are going to analyze the situation and then they will decide. But the studies show clearly that the pandemic phase has to be slowed down so that it will last two years and not overload the medical system’ (HE12). The claim of superior knowledge is also used to point out ‘wrong’ interpretations by other countries, ‘if China is going to cheat with the numbers they could at least do it realistically’ (HE2); by the media, ‘one has to notice that the media do partly offer wrong information. They don't relate the number of new infections to the number of people tested’ (HE6); or even by medical staff: ‘Why don't we request male nurses to shave their beards when they wear FFP2/3 masks. Otherwise the masks are not tight and therefore useless’ (HE14).

Hence, the social character of the health expert is a special type of expert shaped by the framing conditions during the corona crisis. This character offers control through knowledge, believing that more knowledge will lead to success over the virus, and they are present during both stages of analysis.

If we look at the data, there were no differences between the two regions analyzed in terms of the social characters appearing in the data, but differences regarding the stage of the pandemic become important concerning which characters are present. In order to assess the social characters identified in the data and how they are shaded differently by current discourses compared to a pre-pandemic time, it is useful to compare them with the social characters identified by the authors contributing to Moebius and Schroer's (2010) edited volume.

In the 2010 collection it seems that four major societal processes were highly relevant for the social characters they identified and that these processes give an impression of which discourses were powerful at the time the study was conducted: Individualization, social participation and exclusion, economization, and globalization. Individualization as a process of citizens becoming more self-determined individuals is implicit to social characters such as the ‘citizen’, the ‘dandy’, the ‘diva’, the ‘stroller’, the ‘media intellectual’, the ‘narcissist’, the ‘creative mind’ and the ‘star’. Social participation is a dominant issue with regard to social characters such as the ‘refugee’, the ‘stranger’, the ‘superfluous individual’, the ‘looser’, the ‘migrant’ and the ‘therapist’. Economization, understood as a process in which the economic rationality prevalent in the business sector shifts into different social fields not previously characterized by economic rationality (Schimank 2015), is strong in social characters such as the ‘consultant’, the ‘consumer’, the ‘manager’, the ‘creative mind’ and the ‘speculator’. Finally, globalization is strong in social characters such as the ‘global citizen’, the ‘migrant’, the ‘nomad’ and the ‘tourist’. Looking at these social characters (even though this is not the complete list but most of the social characters provided by Moebius and Schroer), one can see that some of them are driven by more than one discourse. The creative mind is driven by individualization and economization discourses, the migrant is driven by participation and globalization discourses. Additionally, there are social characters that can be described as opposing the dominant discourses and their associated characters. The ‘fundamentalist’ for instance stands at least to some extent in opposition to individualization and globalization discourses and ‘bourgeois’ can describe a distinctive counter-character to those individualized characters trying to be different from traditional lifestyles.

These boundaries between powerful discourses of a specific time and simultaneous counter-discourses is something that characterizes both the social characters Moebius and Schroer included in their study in 2010 as well as the social characters of the corona epidemic. However, the discourses underlying the characters have changed and consequently the existing characters have been adapted to new emerging discourses. Characters like the manager and the expert (see also Moebius and Schroer 2010) were already identified as relevant social characters before the pandemic, but they have changed because current discourses and events during the pandemic had to be considered and social characters are closely related to a specific societal situation. The manager had for instance been described in relation to rationalization discourses before the crisis. They believe in the need to optimize organizational processes (Baecker 2010). This social character could be applied and adapted to the needs of the corona crisis and offers an approach to controlling the crisis. The expert has been described as a specialist for solving problems who needs a high level of expert knowledge. The health expert is the expert of the corona pandemic since this social character possesses the expert knowledge to potentially solve existing problems. But the analysis demonstrates not only how social characters are adapted to current developments and events, it also shows that discourses that gain power reveal new social characters. The social worker, for instance, is related to participation discourses and contributes to a picture that includes more participation and less individualization compared to the set of social characters provided by Moebius and Schroer (2010). This raises the question of whether the pandemic can foster social cohesion in times of individualization. However, with regard to the differences between the first and second stage this rather seems like a temporary development that is limited to the stage of increasing restrictions and will quickly disappear. Nevertheless, one limitation of this paper is its small database and short observation period. Future research may prove the extent to which social cohesion remains after the pandemic.

Finally, boundaries between some social characters observed by Moebius and Schroer (2010) are also visible in the case of the characters the pandemic has revealed. While the crisis manager highlights economic discourses especially in the second period of the pandemic, the admonisher opposes the dominance of economic discourses. And while the worried and depressed loner is looking for attention and support and can be related to participation discourses, the social worker satisfies this demand based on the growing importance of social cohesion during the pandemic (Table 1).

All social characters are not only signified by different attributes and properties, but each character also offers a different approach to controlling the crisis. The crisis entrepreneur tries to find new paths or markets for economic survival or even enrichment. The crisis manager also addresses economic questions, but has a strong vocabulary that can be connected to the political sphere when they calculate different options and risks in decision-making. The worried and depressed loner refers to the system of the self and adopts psychological vocabulary. Control means pulling through the crisis mentally by seeking and receiving psychological support from others. The admonisher establishes control through expectations that politicians maintain restrictions and that fellow citizens follow the rules. Finally, the health expert establishes control by highlighting the role of knowledge in overcoming the crisis.

The analysis of social characters contributes to understanding how the pandemic changes a European society, using the example of Germany. Social characters are temporally bound historical figures that allow us to analyze current society. This study shows how preexisting social characters change according to current discourses and how discourses that gain power reveal new social characters. Regarding the discursive dimension of social characters, this study demonstrates that economic discourses remain strong during the crisis but are opposed by health discourses and discourses on social cohesion. However, the study also raises the question of whether this change may be temporary since tendencies to reverse the new developments become visible in the later period of the pandemic. Regarding control, this study demonstrates that each social character provides a different means to communicate control over the crisis. These approaches give individuals some sense of gaining control in times of vulnerability.

Although the study offers various insights into the construction of social characters it is, as any research, not without limitations. First, the study focuses on Germany, where social characters may respond to a different set of discourses compared to other countries. It might be an interesting question for future research whether the characters are nationally confined or can be transposed. Second, the empirical analysis is limited to online data and the app ‘Jodel’. In order to prove the existence of the social characters presented in the study, future research could expand the online sources and conduct interviews in order to learn more about the range of social characters. Third, and in contrast to Moebius and Schroer (2010), this study did not try to provide a more or less complete set of social characters that are representative for a certain time, but it only described those social character that could be reconstructed from the data. Future research could complement this set of social characters in a more comprehensive approach. Fourth, the concept of social characters has its origins in a specific German sociological debate. Yet, as this study has pointed out, the concept is useful and fruitful for an international audience as well. Further research is needed on ways it contributes to sociological discourses analysis (Keller 2007) as well as to the research into group mentalities (Feldt 2010; Klicperová-Baker and Koštál 2015), or other approaches that share underlying theoretical assumptions.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Tim Seidenschnur is coordinator of the thematic area ‘Governance and Organization’ at the International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER) from April 2018 on. As a sociologist, he is especially working in the fields of organization studies, higher education research, and cultural sociology. He has published on management consultancy in public organizations, on Brexit in the field of higher education, and on anti-Semitism in adolescent peer groups. Tim Seidenschnur worked at the University of Würzburg as a research associate and at the University of Kassel as a lecturer before joining INCHER.