How Switzerland kept in touch during Covid-19

7/12/2020 5:23:31 AM

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) Researchers from the University of Zurich share how the coronavirus led them to redirect their research in order to better understand people''s communication habits during the pandemic, and what they found.

June 19, 2020 - 16:42 Eszter Hargittai and Minh Hao Nguyen See in other languages: 3

Deutsch

(de) Wie Schweizer trotz Corona in Kontakt blieben

Italiano

(it) Come ci si è tenuti in contatto in Svizzera durante la COVID-19
Français

(fr) Comment les Suisses sont restés en contact pendant la crise du coronavirus

When lockdown measures spread across Switzerland in mid-March, everyone''s lives were thrown into disarray. Like many others, we scrambled to figure out our home office situation while keeping tabs on far away family members. Work meetings, school classes, conferences, exercise regimes, birthday parties and happy hours were all moving online.

As scholars who study people''s digital media uses at the University of Zurich''s Department of Communication and Media Research, much of society''s reaction to the pandemic was directly related to our research expertise. Suddenly everyone was interested in how people were using digital media to connect with family, friends, and colleagues.

While busy finding our bearings, we also wondered: ''Should we launch into a study on all this or is it more realistic to focus our energies on coping with the unprecedented situation?'' We were genuinely unsure at first given that we were all facing big unknowns about how to work from home and so much else in our lives.

Topics we had been studying for years as communication scholars were suddenly taking centre stage for everybody. It felt like we needed to be part of the conversation. We could not lend a hand in the medical realm, but we could contribute as social scientists to understanding how people were coping.

Were people increasing communication with those outside their household, and if yes, using which digital methods? How were people learning about of all of the government rules and health recommendations related to coronavirus? Was everyone experiencing the lockdown similarly or were there differences in how people were adapting? These were just some of the questions we were pondering as we watched lockdowns sweep across the globe.

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