An analysis of R/Coronavirus discourse about COVID-19 healthcare workers and patients during the early pandemic: heroic frontliners or unavoidable victims?

Abstract

ABSTRACT As COVID-19 spread in early 2020, individuals turned to social media platforms like r/coronavirus to seek and share information. This study builds upon previous work by evaluating how healthcare workers and COVID-19 patients were framed by the r/coronavirus community, elucidating how social media users described and understood the roles of people combatting and treating COVID-19. A content analysis of 217 posts and 2,164 corresponding comments was conducted. Findings indicate that healthcare workers, commonly framed as pandemic victims (e.g. as subjects of others’ decisions and behavior) or philanthropists, were given less attention than patients, whose victimization was the dominant focus of the discourse. Posts were commonly individualistic, comments leaned collectivistic, while the entire discourse was largely negative in valence. These findings elucidate the ways that r/coronavirus users described and understood healthcare workers and COVID-19 patients and suggest concerns for public health practitioners who might address these groups during future disease emergencies.