Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a new reality worldwide and reconfigured identities, behaviors and interests. It has called for heroic representations and highlighted the role of social media in efficient communication. All of the above considered, the current article focuses on the representation of the COVID-19 pandemic generated by the undergraduate students enrolled in the Social Work study program in Transilvania University of Brașov (Romania) by indicating the main connotations of the pandemic and drawing a comparison between students’ representation and the early representations of the same pandemic produced by specialized literature on the topic. The thematic analysis of the essays produced by students highlights their frustration with the havoc brought about by the pandemic to their graduation plans and with the lack of interaction with colleagues and academic staff, as well as their gratitude for the efforts undertaken by their professors to make online education functional, their availability to adapt and support the restrictive measures imposed by authorities, and their optimism about the evolution of the pandemic. The content analysis of 60 bibliographic sources on the topic of COVID-19, indicated by the Anelis+ network as the most relevant in the spring of 2020, highlights a thematic convergence between the aforementioned sources and students’ representation of COVID-19, and thus their responsible attitude toward meeting the challenges of the pandemic.
Highlights
We focused on identifying whether the COVID-19 pandemic raised questions and indicated problems of a similar nature, both for students and authors of relevant research in the academic field
Most of the COVID-19 effects experienced during the lockdown period and mentioned by the undergraduates are under the shadow of frustration (17/37): the experiences of their last year in the faculty (S24: ”It should have been a memorable year”); the festive course and beautiful months spent with colleagues (S2: “We no longer meet our colleagues and maybe we will never get to see one another again . . . ”); S3: “I would do anything for another day in the dorm”); the teachers, even the school, things and people held dear, or the job in some cases, are mentioned as losses
Joia and Michelotto [41] show that the core of the social representations of the COVID19 pandemic is based on the association of the terms fear–distancing–social–health and prevention–diseases
Summary
On the 11 March 2020, the Director of the World Health Organization acknowledged that the COVID-19 virus originating from the Hubei province of China had led to a worldwide pandemic [1]. The pandemic has affected different countries around the world, challenging them to find common means of facing it [2] It has put pressure on the medical system and jolted social structures [3]. The symptoms manifested mostly in the case of young people, and around 2.5% of world population died because of it It has been considered the most violent epidemic ever known by humankind since . The discovery of penicillin and improvements in living conditions, hygiene and education led to considerable reduction in the incidence of such diseases It has been almost two years already since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has generated victims and induced feelings of insecurity in people across the globe. Unlike the state of affairs up to the end of modernity, contemporary communication facilities allow the configuration of overall global image of the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic and of the different regional ways of tackling it during its development
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