Pandemic patriotism: Official speeches in the face of the global COVID-19 crisis

Abstract

Spanish

French

Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities have had to announce health, economic, financial, and social measures. The way in which these actors communicate is crucial and points to the collective meanings that are transmitted when dealing with the pandemic. The discourses used are designed with different frameworks and narratives to have broad appeal, so as to convince the public about the government’s performance in managing the crisis and to obtain respect and obedience. Based on a qualitative analysis of 238 official speeches from five continents delivered between March and May 2020, this article contributes to the analysis of the pandemic with regard to two axes that underlie the speeches in other crises of this magnitude: appeals for solidarity and references to a war context. The results show that in this pandemic, the discourses have been deployed through these axes, reinforcing collective memories and national identities as sources to activate patriotic feelings and sustain implemented measures.

Keywords

Pandemic patriotism solidarity state war

Introduction

When the World Health Organization (WHO) officially decreed that the health contingency faced by multiple countries was a pandemic, millions of people were already in an unprecedented situation of confinement as the numbers of infected and dead increased dramatically. In the months that followed, the virus spread, expanding from Asia to Europe and then to America, with numerous cases in countries such as the United States, Brazil, and India.

The pandemic has had negative economic consequences that humanity has not experienced for decades. The International Monetary Fund estimated in June 2020 that the world economy would contract by 4.9%, and World Bank researchers suggested that the pandemic would produce the deepest global recession since World War II, with a negative impact that would almost double that experienced during the financial crisis of 2009 and with the largest number of countries since 1870 experiencing a reduction in their per capita income (gross domestic product (GDP) per capita) (Kose et al., 2020). As a consequence, between 400 and 500 million people could fall below the poverty line, representing the first absolute increase in this global statistic since 1999 (Sumner et al., 2020).

In this context, governments have had to implement a series of health, economic, and social measures. These measures have included partial or total confinement of the population, aggressive purchases of infrastructure and health instruments, changes in fiscal policy, and the provision of special resources for vulnerable groups.

Although the magnitude of these measures has depended on the impact of the pandemic in each country, communication has been crucial in all countries facing such measures. First, it has been necessary for each government to explain the plan for combatting the pandemic. Second, governments have had to take a position with regard to the pandemic, that is, to evaluate the health crisis and justify the measures adopted. Finally, the legitimacy of the state to implement policies and the confidence of citizens in the government have been at stake (Devine et al., 2020). For these reasons, in addition to presenting concrete measures, official discourses have used different frameworks and narratives to convince the population of the proper role of government in managing the crisis as well as to bolster compliance with its decisions.

How are official measures against the pandemic presented? What strategies are used to legitimize state actions? The literature shows that political messages in critical contexts such as wars invoke patriotism, national pride, solidarity, or fear of an enemy as a way to justify actions and give an emotional component to speeches (Loseke, 2009). The aim of this article is to review this historical assumption for the COVID-19 pandemic in a transnational set of official discourses. Countries from five continents are considered, offering a perspective that complements most of the analyses focused on the impact of this crisis on specific countries (Pleyers, 2020).

The article thus contributes to the analysis of the pandemic in light of official discourses aimed at providing information about the pandemic and restrictions, authorizations or freedoms of citizens in this context. Following Wodak (2021), two main frameworks of discourses and their appeal to the public in announcements of social policies and justifications for a particular public intervention are examined and codified. The findings allow us to affirm that although official messages usually announce concrete health and economic measures, behind them, patriotic feelings and the sense of belonging to a national community are renewed from the perspectives of collaboration and a common threat.

The article is organized as follows. First, the role of nation states and the discourses of official authorities during the pandemic are discussed. Second, the methodology is presented, in particular the strategy for collecting and analyzing official discourses. Third, the results are grouped under the concepts of solidarity and warfare. Fourth, the results and their association with the theoretical framework are discussed, followed by a conclusion that synthesizes the main findings, acknowledges limitations, and provides suggestions for future studies.

State and citizenship during the pandemic

The health crisis has reinforced the focus on society as a unit of analysis. This focus can be recognized at multiple levels: at the micro-level, by noting the constraints in relating to other individuals; at the meso-level, in the observation of interdependence of social spheres whose coordination has been altered during pandemic; and at the macro-level, in the global condition of the pandemic, which affects global citizenship. The latter is perceived negatively as a collective threat resulting from the global transmission of the virus (Esposito, 2020) but also positively when international cooperation has been fostered to seek solutions. This has been particularly reflected in the exchange of information and publications among scientists to develop treatments for the disease (Pleyers, 2020).

Despite its global nature, nation states have played a central role in confronting the pandemic. Although government decisions and the speed with which they were taken have been analyzed as part of the conflict between preventing the spread of the virus and responding to economic interests (Spash, 2021), states have had wide discretion to act in an imposing and coercive manner in their policies within their territories. This has resulted in decisions related to the closure of borders, restriction of civil liberties, or the provision of social and health services for citizens (Pleyers, 2020). In addition, states have acquired a new legitimacy to extend their influence, being able to introduce a more active fiscal and tax policy or design new devices to monitor and restrict freedoms to combat the virus, understood as an infectious ‘agent’ states must fight (Latour, 2020).

The central role that states have acquired has been accompanied by an increase in the popularity of presidents. Several authors agree that this increase may be due to the ‘rally-round-the-flag effect’ (Mueller, 1970; Schraff, 2021). There are different explanations for this effect: the activation of patriotic feelings that center national unity on the figure of the president, the temporary suspension of disputes between opposition and ruling coalitions, a greater presence of presidents in the media, or the feelings of vulnerability and threat experienced by citizens that lead them to place their trust in authorities (Jennings, 2020). The increase in popularity does not consider the adequacy or quality of the government intervention in response to the event that caused the intervention, and this approval begins to decrease as the event wanes (Mueller, 1970). Recent evidence suggests that positive effects not only pertain to presidential popularity and trust in governments but also to a greater appreciation of democracy and institutions, with an understanding, at least in the short term, of government actions when they are considered necessary due to the health crisis (Bol et al., 2020). However, this popularity has not been constant for all authorities, and many have been strongly criticized when the virus was perceived as uncontrolled or there was no clarity on how to deal with it. Examples of this situation are Brazil, Mexico, United States, and the United Kingdom.

Common problems for which state actions have been deployed are disinformation and uncertainty (Zinn, 2021). Lack of data, dissent among experts, multiple types of expertise required simultaneously, and different levels of institutional trust are just some examples of the conditions under which fiscal responses have been designed (Capano et al., 2020), leading to varied interpretations and reactions by authorities (Crayne and Medeiros, 2021) and the dissemination of different types of risk and conspiracy information in the media (Rooke, 2021).

Policies resulting from state action, meanwhile, seem to have consequences with regard to the way people have identified risks during the pandemic. Analyzing a survey on risk perception conducted in 70 countries, Breznau (2020) shows that strong and early government interventions reduced the perceptions of potentially intense risk in the face of the pandemic; among countries where such interventions did not exist, differences in risk perceptions vary according to the strength of the welfare state. Thus, solid welfare policies operated as a second barrier if the initial state intervention was weak, reducing the concerns of citizens compared to those of citizens living in countries with weaker welfare systems.

Recent studies also emphasize social and institutional trust as a determining factor for implementing restrictive policies and ensuring compliance with those policies, which in this pandemic is related to the effectiveness of quarantine, testing, and isolation measures (Devine et al., 2020).

State and community: Identity, solidarity, and state of war

The focus on society and the nation state is also nourished by the interpellation of collective morality when the pandemic demands decisions that involve probabilities of death, economic development, and different priorities in the life cycle (Eyal, 2020). In that sense, although presidential speeches always have a collective orientation, today more than ever, leaders have had to take the entire population into account, shedding light on their communication of the morality of government and the appeal they consider most appropriate to represent their citizens.

The idea of a nation rests on the concept of a limited political community – in the sense of not being infinite in terms of its members – and sovereign whose main symbol is the sovereign state (Anderson, 1983). Although societies have never been purely national, as geopolitical and transnational relations can restrict the sovereignty of states, the national scale preserves their importance as institutions that merge military forces, infrastructure, family, social and economic regulations, and feelings of affiliation with a national community (Mann, 1993).

In times of adversity, the idea of nation is redefined (Rosanvallon, 2012). Typically, wars or other geopolitical conflicts strengthen collective identity by denying others and promoting civic commitment and national pride that contribute to the fulfillment of obligations, such as paying higher taxes (Bank et al., 2008; Geys and Konrad, 2020; Gil and Atria, 2021).

This is related to the activation of patriotic attitudes. Patriotism increases the willingness to voluntarily comply with certain fiscal rules and can be a powerful motivator (Levi, 1997). Previous studies define patriotism as a demonstration of active consent to government demands due to a ‘feeling of devotion to one’s country’ (Geys & Konrad, 2016: 803). National patriotic sentiment began to take shape in prior centuries, especially with the American and French revolutions, and has been one of the foundations with which states seek to obtain support to sustain their military and tax functions as well as other political obligations, persuading individuals to comply because they believe in the state and consent to do so (Atria, 2019; Levi, 1997).

When there is no consent, the acceptance of the state and its regulations can be based on coercion. Although consent is preferable over coercion because it grants stability and sustainability to the relationship between citizens and the state, compliance with norms can in practice be understood as quasi-voluntary because without coercion – which Weber analyzed starting from the monopoly of organized violence – it would be impossible to maintain control over a territory (Levi, 1988). During this pandemic, variation in fiscal responses has been explained similarly, considering factors that exceed the coercive capacity of governments (Giritli Nygren and Olofsson, 2021; Pierre, 2020). Drastic changes in behavior in a population require various state actions, which in some cases rely on greater control and supervision, while in other states, actions are based more on flexible recommendations and appeals (Pierre, 2020).

Presidential speeches constitute the communication mechanism from which respect and obedience to government decisions are sought. The literature shows that in critical contexts such as wars, these discourses are more persuasive because they do not include relevant internal criticism and an emotional component is added through patriotic references, national pride, solidarity, or fear of an enemy (Loseke, 2009).

Wodak (2021) shows how nationalist and nativist rhetoric has been employed in five European countries to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. She distinguishes four discursive frameworks: the religious framework, which refers to the call to remain humble and faithful and not lose hope because sacrifices will be rewarded, thus appealing to collective morality; the dialogic framework, which establishes a quasi-egalitarian relationship between authority and citizenship, including an appeal to rationality along with authority; a framework that appeals to trust in the public, hoping that it will translate into compliance with the authorities, highlighting self-responsibility; and finally, the framework of war, which gives all the responsibility to authorities in the fight against the virus and assumes that people have to abide by orders (Opillard et al., 2020; Wodak, 2021).

To date, a good proportion of comparative studies has been carried out in Europe. There is a plethora of articles on discursive frameworks of national authorities, revealing collaborative (Madarová et al., 2020) and populist frameworks (da Fonseca et al., 2021), among others. However, there is still a need to stimulate a line of research that investigates the global scope given the transnational impact of the pandemic. This article seeks to contribute in this direction.

Although there are multiple approaches to achieve this aim,¹ presidential speeches will be analyzed herein as a particular genre of discourse, with their own narrative structure, as suggested by critical discourse analysis (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009). These speeches provide certain frameworks that combine an official language – which may or may not be mandatory – with one based on criteria of effectiveness and persuasion to emphasize or minimize political attitudes, gain support, manipulate public opinion, or legitimize political power. The following section presents the methodology to perform this analysis.

Methodology

The analysis was based on 238 speeches by official authorities from 66 countries distributed across five continents. The largest number of speeches was concentrated in Europe, with a total of 96 speeches from 29 countries, including Turkey, while the lowest amount corresponds to Oceania, with 15 speeches from three countries. The discourses analyzed were in five languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German. Twenty-three speeches from eight countries had to be translated for analysis, for which we utilized digital translators.

Most of the collected speeches were obtained from official government websites. However, we also incorporated speeches from other channels used by authorities to communicate with the public, such as messages to the nation, interviews or conferences and press releases (see Table 1). Although we are aware that there are important differences in typology and audience between the channels used to deliver official messages, considering a broader range allowed to identify official sources as completely as possible, increasing the number of presidential messages and countries represented when there were no discourses available on official websites. Similarly, the inclusion of several channels allowed us to account for the real ways in which governments communicated with the population in the context of an extreme crisis during which leaders faced strong pressure to deliver announcements with speed and mass reach.

Table 1.

Frequency distribution according to type of discourse.

Type of speech	Frequency (%)
Message to the nation	83 (34.9%)
Press conference	48 (20.2%)
Official statement	20 (8.4%)
Meeting with authorities	19 (8%)
News	17 (7.1%)
Intervention in parliament	15 (6.3%)
Speech at an international assembly	11 (4.6%)
Speech at conferences/congresses/ceremonies	10 (4.2%)
Interview	9 (3.7%)
Other	6 (2.5%)
Total	238

Source: Own elaboration.

‘Other’ includes blog posts, online speeches, Twitter threads, opinion columns, and online conferences.

Speeches were mostly delivered by presidents (50%) and prime ministers (40%). In addition, 84% were declared by male authorities, 12% by female authorities, and 4% by male and female authorities.

The period considered for the selection of speeches was between March 2020 – the beginning of the pandemic for a very broad set of countries – and May 2020, with March being the month with the highest frequency of selected speeches. A period of 3 months was chosen to obtain a ‘discursive thread’, similar to the strategy used by Wodak (2021). In addition to the temporal criterion, speeches were selected for their content, that is, those that delivered as much information as possible regarding fiscal policies and economic, health, and social measures aimed at addressing the pandemic. Third, speeches that were addressed to the nation as a whole were favored. For example, in countries such as the United States or Mexico, more than 50 transcribed speeches and press conferences were available on the website of each government, for which a preliminary review was necessary to select the speeches following the above-mentioned criteria. Conversely, in countries such as El Salvador and Chad, there were much fewer speeches. Therefore, a minimum of two speeches and a maximum of five speeches, depending on availability, were analyzed for each country. Table 2 provides the distribution of the 238 speeches in the selected period characterized by speaker and gender.

Table 2.

Characterization of the analyzed discourses.

Number of speeches	238
Date	March	92 (39%)
	April	77 (32%)
	May	67 (28%)
	Unspecified	2 (1%)
Speaker (%)	President	119 (50%)
	Prime Minister (includes President of the Federal Council)	96 (40%)
	Chancellor	4 (2%)
	Minister or ministerial statement	13 (5%)
	Monarchical authority	4 (2%)
	Federal council or government	2 (1%)
Gender (%)	Female	29 (12%)
	Male	199 (84%)
	Both	10 (4%)

Source: Own elaboration.

A double analytical strategy was employed. A deductive qualitative content analysis was performed (Schreier, 2012), which involved the creation of a coding frame that served to examine the material. This framework was based on two main discursive axes: (1) appeal for solidarity, that is, codes that call for national, international, and/or political cooperation and (2) codes that refer to a war context to describe the danger and impact of the spread of COVID-19 in each country. This coding book follows the research guidelines described by Wodak (2021), who through discursive-historical analysis, examined the communication crisis of different European governments during the pandemic. The second analytical strategy was based then on the two main frames codified – ‘solidarity’ and ‘war’ – after which we conducted a detailed discursive analysis of both axes in the selected discourses.

Once the coding frame was built, a code search was performed to detect semantic families within each of the topics. The appeal for solidarity included the codification of terms that called for national, international, and/or political cooperation to confront COVID-19. For this, the following abbreviated codes were recorded: ‘cooperation’, ‘together’, ‘solidarity’, and ‘united’. The appeal for a war context included the codification of terms that refer to armed conflicts or wars to establish metaphors with the control of the spread of the virus in the national territory. For this, the following codes were established for the first stage of review of the discourses: ‘war’, ‘battle’, ‘enemy’, ‘fight’, and ‘combat’ in the five languages mentioned above.

As this process progressed, the coding framework was refined based on different iterations with the material. In this way, seven other codes were examined for the appeal solidarity axis: ‘joint’, ‘join’, ‘collaboration’, ‘collective’, ‘dialogue’, ‘work team’, and ‘team’. Therefore, there was a total of 11 concepts for this axis. It is worth mentioning that we only selected codes that, within the context of each discourse, clearly denoted appeals for solidarity. This implied omitting titles or headings of sections or names of programs, plans, or state funds. In addition, all those mentions outside the explicit dialogue of the authorities (e.g. concepts that appeared in statements or explanations of news) were excluded from the analysis.

In the axis of appeals for war, different iterations led to the inclusion of three new codes: ‘defeat’, ‘victory’, and ‘win’. As in the axis of solidarity, elements that did not refer to the original meaning were not codified (e.g. references from authorities to describe the expiration of a credit loan or other financial tools, which in Spanish could be associated with verbs such as ‘overcome’ or ‘defy’ were omitted).

For both axes, all singular codes were analyzed considering different conjugations, synonyms, tenses, and singular or plural uses. We sought to capture the details of the different discursive forms, syntax, and metaphorical topos, in line with Reisigl and Wodak (2009). Tables 3 and 4 summarize the concepts used for the analysis of discourses:

Table 3.

Solidarity appeals axis: word selection.

English	Spanish	Portuguese	French	German
Join	Unirse	Juntese-se	Joindre	Beitreten
Joint	Conjunto	Junta	Mixte	Joint
Unity	Unidad	Unidade	Unité	Einheit
Together	Juntos	Juntos	Ensemble	Zusammen
Solidarity	Solidaridad	Solidariedade	Solidarité	Solidarität
Cooperation	Cooperación	Cooperacao	La coopération	Zusammenarbeit
Collaboration	Colaboración	Colaboracao	Collaboration	Zusammenarbeit
Collective	Colectivo	Coletivo	Collectif	Kollektiv
Dialogueue	Diálogo	Diálogo	Dialogue	Dialog
Work Team	Trabajo en equipo	Equipe de trabalho	Équipe de travail	Arbeitsgruppe
Team	Equipo	Equipe	Équipe	Mannschaft

Source: Own elaboration.

English words were used as base codes because they correspond to the most significant percentage of the total words counted.

Table 4.

War appeals axis: word selection.

English	Spanish	Portuguese	French	German
War^a	Guerra	Guerra	Guerre	Krieg
Battle	Batallar	Batalha	Bataille	Schlacht
Enemy	Enemigo	Inimigo	Ennemi	Feind
Fight	Lucha	Luta	Bats Toi	Kämpf
Combat	Combate	Combate	Combat	Kampf
Defeat	Derrotar	Derrota	Défaite	Niederlage
Victory	Victoria	Vitória	Victoire	Sieg
Win	Ganar	Ganhar	Gagner	Gewinnen

Source: Own elaboration.

Occasionally, the word ‘War’ was used to refer to a previous conflict (e.g. World War II). It was decided to count these occurrences because the authorities generally compared the current situation with that of that war, in the sense of a rhetorical topoi (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009).

Results

Solidarity and patriotism during the pandemic

In our sample, 77% of the discourses include codes related to the solidarity axis. In total, 924 codes were counted as appealing to solidarity, with a greater proportion concentrated in Oceania (93.3%) and Africa (89.2%). As seen in Table 5, the lowest proportion is located on the Asian continent (64.3%). The most frequently repeated codes are ‘together’ (270 times), ‘cooperation’ (172 times), and ‘solidarity’ (151 times).

Table 5.

Total speeches with appeals for solidarity by continent.

Continent	No. of speeches with words of solidarity	Total speeches	%
Europe	69	96	71.9%
Africa	33	37	89.2%
America	41	49	83.7%
Asia	27	42	65.8%
Oceania	14	15	93.3%
TOTAL	184	238	77%

Source: Own elaboration.

Beyond frequency, there are three types of discursive references that appeal to solidarity. First is the allusion to a common cause that must be faced by all layers of society, that is, political parties, the different powers of the state and citizens. This idea can be exemplified with official communications in Argentina and the United States:

We are Argentina. A united country in which everyone must commit to others and everyone to each other, starting with the state. (Argentina, 03/13/2020)

Now is the chance for us to come together as politicians: We are all in this together. We must put politics aside, stop the partisanship and unify together as one nation and one family. (United States, 03/11/2020)

In this type of appeal, the authorities usually make a reference to collective work. It is a common effort that reinforces the contribution of each group to a collective challenge. This is why analogies are made between society and sports teams, as exemplified by this quote from the government of Angola:

In this great effort to increase national production, we will work as a team, where each person has a position, as players and supporters of this club, which is called Angola, and as a commitment to raise it to victory. (Angola, 05/29/2020)

A second type of appeal for solidarity relates to the recognition of specific groups of civil society, such as health personnel, public officials, religious institutions, and people who operate in critical areas. The objective of these references is to generate empathy and identification with those who keep working so that the rest can protect themselves from infection. In this way, particular groups of workers are presented as an example for their sacrifice for the nation. In this appeal, communications are structured around the idea of sacrifice, a semantic axis that gains weight in the African and Latin American continents and seems to operate as a support for public institutions beyond regulation and enforcement. A similar pattern was observed in the Spanish case during the most critical phase of the pandemic. In these two appeals, there is a clear reference to pandemic patriotism around collective effort and sacrifice to overcome the crisis.

Finally, a third type of appeal for solidarity refers to international cooperation. This call appears in 18 of the 66 countries analyzed in the five continents and mostly represents large countries or countries with a high global mobilization capacity. In particular, the pandemic called into question the European community as a unified body, either to collaborate with the most affected countries in the beginning of the pandemic (Spain and Italy) or, to a lesser extent, as an international aid entity. In addition, although with less occurrence, some discourses consider environmental commitment as part of global solidarity efforts.

Only by playing as a team we can achieve a good European result. The coronavirus pandemic has affected all of Europe symmetrically, and responses should also be symmetrical. (Poland, 05/26/2020)

‘In a time of emergency, we urgently need to forge global solidarities and collaboration between progressive forces across borders. (Iceland, 05/11/2020)

War and the pandemic: Defending the homeland against the invisible enemy

In our sample, 170 discourses (71.5%) included at least one code that referred to a conflict or war against the coronavirus pandemic. When observing frequencies by continent (Table 6), 100% of the discourses analyzed in Oceania considered some type of warlike appeal in the control of the pandemic. Notably, the virus has been most tightly controlled in this region, quarantining entire cities despite having few cases. In America, 87.8% of the discourses presented such a reference, followed by Africa (81.1%) and Asia (73.8%). In European messages, the association between the pandemic and armed conflicts was less salient, appearing in 54.2% of communications.

Table 6.

War appeals by continent.

Continent	No. of discourses with words associated with conflict/war	Total	%
Europe	52	96	54.2%
Africa	30	37	81.1%
America	43	49	87.8%
Asia	31	41	75.6%
Oceania	15	15	100%
TOTAL	171	238	71.8%

Source: Own elaboration.

The war messages presented by authorities mainly included the codes ‘fight’ (282 times), ‘combat’ (260 times), and ‘war’ (115 times). America was the continent where there were more words referring to conflicts (with 6.14 codes on average), followed by Asia (5.14), Oceania (5.13), and Africa (4.22), with a smaller proportion in Europe (2.17).

War references are used by authorities to establish similarities between the current health situation and other adverse national events, such as wars, natural disasters, or previous pandemics. This is similar to the state of emergency noted by Wodak (2021). Specifically, while there are narratives that use warlike language in countries as different as Lesotho, Armenia, Fiji, and Cuba, in European countries such as Switzerland, Spain, France, or Greece, there is a frequent reference to World War II. This was also the case for New Zealand at the beginning of the pandemic (Malpass, 2020).

The comparison with previous disasters, especially wars, is based on the role that these events have in collective memories, a central mechanism in sparking the national collective imaginary (Anderson, 1983). Thus, appeals to the past reinforce the collective meaning. The magnitude of the health crisis and the economic crisis that accompanies it facilitate this comparison. The pandemic is understood as a series of battles that must be fought simultaneously by each country. In particular, health and economic ‘battles’ are highlighted in official communications. Subsequently, as the pandemic progressed, the battle for mental health also appears.

We are living in unprecedented times with the twin battles that we face and that we fight against the virus and against the economic ruin that it can threaten. (Australia, 03/30/2020)

One pandemic is the health pandemic of the coronavirus; the other pandemic is the social pandemic of the recession. (Chile, 05/07/2020)

The warlike component is reinforced in official communications in which authorities allude to the agency of the virus when addressing pandemic control (Latour, 2020). This is presented as an invisible enemy who does not respect anything or anyone, who does not make differences between countries or ideologies and who is capable of crossing borders and invading countries. The virus is presented as an external agent that must be faced, much more than as a disease that must be treated by health systems.

In the configuration of a state of war against the virus, it is essential to identify how it is fought. For this, authorities from countries on all continents call for people to play an oppositional role in this confrontation to prevent the spread of the virus. Appeals to participate in this war mainly include calls for national unity, for example, alignment between state powers or between the state and citizens, frequently increasing nationalism, nativism, and xenophobia (Wodak, 2021). This invitation often contains patriotic appeals, favoring its association with characteristics common to the entire population. The following quotes exemplify some narratives that vary in their political and regional origin.

We are up for the fight. There is no better defensive line than the All Blacks. (New Zealand, 03/17/2020)

Any student of Fijian history watching this evening knows that pandemics – like COVID-19 – must be battled with the same urgency as full-scale military conflicts. If not, they can be just as fatal as any war. (Fiji, 03/27/2020)

I ask the entire network of social, neighborhood, popular organizations (. . .) all social movements in the country, all without distinction, without exclusion, to take the lead in the battle to protect the people of Venezuela from this coronavirus pandemic. (Venezuela, 03/12/2020)

We are at war against a vicious and invisible enemy, one that cannot be seen by the naked eye. In this extraordinary war, we are all soldiers. (Philippines, 03/16/2020)

Similar to what was observed above, there is a special emphasis on the ‘front line’ of the fight against the virus, especially health personnel, who must face it constantly and contain the spread. In some countries, for example, Philippines and Ghana, this group also includes members of the armed forces.

Finally, parallels between the pandemic and military milestones are highlighted by comparisons with previous heroic deeds, such as independence, the struggle for labor rights, and the history of emblematic people for national development. In this sense, official communications appeal to collective memory as a mechanism to reinforce common identity and delimit possible courses of action against the pandemic.

Discussion

Based on the results, the ‘rally-round-the-flag effect’ (Mueller, 1970; Schraff, 2021) is frequently observed in our sample of discourses. The authorities generate a call to the population to be active or passive participants in the public measures against the virus. However, to obtain commitment and compliance from the population, as well as to represent the role of the state, leaders have transitioned between two poles: one where the state appears as a protective entity that relies on the work and commitment of the citizens, and another in which a coercive and more authoritarian figure predominates.

In the former, the figure of the state appears as a transparent entity that must account for its actions to earn the respect of the population. Here, the use of terms that denote shared responsibility and the need for support for adequate decision-making is highlighted. In the latter, the negative characterization of those who adopt objectionable or inappropriate behaviors is emphasized. In these cases, there is a reinforcement of the threats as well as the more concrete representation of groups whose behaviors affect the community. These two poles are frequently combined in official messages regardless of whether a frame of solidarity or war is applied, although with different degrees of proximity to one of them. Next, we refer to the findings concerning the frames.

Solidarity, both inside and outside countries, is a discursive axis that is found in the five continents. Collaborative work is highlighted, strengthening the representation of national integration and the different contributions of the state and citizens. The messages appeal to responsibility, trust, and empathy as that occurs with the dialogic and trust frames described by Wodak (2021). Sometimes, these frameworks help promote love for the country and nationalism, highlighting the emergence of new national heroes linked to the control of the pandemic (e.g. front-line personnel) and the strength of national institutions. This axis also includes appeals for global cooperation.

In America, speeches for solidarity that call for political collaboration stand out, while in Africa, discourses in which the authorities thank the population for the sacrifices made during the pandemic are particularly frequent. In both cases, the idea of sacrifice is central. In the European messages, there is also a call to provide help to neighboring countries – within the framework of the European community – that were severely affected by the pandemic. In this way, ideas of solidarity draw symbolic borders beyond the nation state, even referring to vulnerable countries in other regions; however, the analysis of their translation into real policies is beyond the scope of this article.

For its part, the reference to war as a discursive axis was widely repeated among authorities. Although allusions to war are less frequent in Europe, half of the messages analyzed include this framework. In this sense, although the European authorities also resorted to this metaphorical topos to communicate about the ‘battle’ against COVID-19 (Wodak, 2021), its lower use seems to be associated with an approach that prioritizes appeals to the consent of the citizenry, either recognizing the importance of individual rights in democracy, for example, Germany, or prioritizing the provision of advice and recommendations for behavior during the pandemic, for example, Sweden (Pierre, 2020). On the contrary, in Oceania – which stood out from the beginning for controlling the propagation with a strong institutional framework – both discursive mechanisms were used synchronously, and this resonated in the public sphere. In New Zealand, for example, comparisons in the media between the pandemic and World War II from the beginning of the pandemic were reinforced (Malpass, 2020). The appeal to collective milestones of the past – which are part of the imaginary and collective memory of each country – reinforces this way of communication.

In sociological terms, it is possible that the sacrificial and warlike discourse evoked by the comparison with war points to the notions of solidarity distinguished by Durkheim (1893). In this sense, both semantic axes could appeal to two forms of social cohesion: mechanical, through collective unity in the face of an enemy, strengthening nationalism and the collective memories forged under that wing; and organic, through collaboration that reinforces the state institutions that work together with citizens.

This seems to support the idea that there are two poles between which national states move. There is, on the one hand, a more authoritarian state whose operation is based on exerting coercion to maintain control of the pandemic and, on the other hand, a state that protects and cares for its own and, in some cases, for other countries more disadvantaged by the crisis. Regardless of which role is given to the state, the speeches have appeals for solidarity and references to past armed conflicts as their axes, jointly promoting a notion of pandemic patriotism.

Thus, there have been at least four strategies used by authorities when seeking a feeling of patriotism during the pandemic. First, it has reinforced the idea that the time of crisis is exceptionally complex given the unknown characteristics of the virus and its rapid spread. In this way, the pandemic is constructed as a temporary challenge (Jarvis, 2022). This leads to the message that all social layers should unite in a common goal, which is the control of the pandemic. Second, national examples are sought – in the past or present – to facilitate citizen empathy with decreed measures, for example, the portrayal of medical personnel as heroes (Madarová et al., 2020). They are referred to as being on the front line in the battle against the virus and as those who sacrifice themselves for the nation. Third, the virus is given agency; that is, it is presented as an external force that has invaded the territory (Opillard et al., 2020). Thus, a climate of conflict or war is created in which people must collaborate or be active participants in the struggle. Finally, a sense of ‘we’ is reinforced in distinction from ‘the others’. The idea of ‘we’ usually refers to the nation (and those who are part of the fight against the virus), while ‘the others’ refer to the virus and the uncertainty caused by the health and economic crisis. This stimulates patriotism in some places, as well as xenophobic and nativist feelings (e.g. Prasad, 2020).

Finally, although the authorities differ in their emphasis when communicating their actions against the pandemic, the frameworks of solidarity and war were widely used together. This combination suggests that to persuade the population, various authorities considered it necessary to construct a narrative for which it was not enough to promote national solidarity or unity between a group of countries. They also had to portray the virus as an external force that threatens the foundations of the nation by harming people and institutions. Thus, although the measures against the pandemic were based on different behaviors and preexisting social norms in each country (Pierre, 2020), the combined use of these frameworks suggests that they are perceived by the authorities of different regions as effective in providing legitimacy to their actions.

Conclusion

This article sought to contribute to the study of official discourses during the pandemic. To do this, 238 discourses from 66 countries in five continents were analyzed. This material allowed to identify how the main authorities of each country refer to the pandemic and appeal to the citizenry, as well as the frameworks used to announce social policies and justify certain public interventions.

The analysis considers two discursive frameworks: solidarity and war. Appeals for solidarity highlight a notion of political community, reinforcing ties through joint work and the allusion to national heroes who sacrifice themselves to control the pandemic. References to war allow the construction of an image of the virus as an external threat that must be confronted, which demands sacrifices from the population. Although there may be other topos and discursive frameworks at the national and local levels (Madarová et al., 2020; Opillard et al., 2020), these two axes structure countless discourses at the transnational level, demonstrating the centrality of the call to internal cohesion to face the health crisis. Such cohesion was finally achieved through the appeal for classic mechanisms of mechanical and organic solidarity of nation states.

Among the limitations of the study, the discourses analyzed correspond only to a part of the reaction of countries to the pandemic. Therefore, this analysis should be complemented with indicators of state capacity, resources, citizen responses, and infections to understand the performance of national authorities as well as the role of the state in each country.

The analysis of the motives expressed as discourses constitutes a different exercise from the study of beliefs, values, and social norms that influence the configuration of these discourses. Consequently, although this research shows the different relevance of the frameworks of solidarity and war in multiple countries, other studies are needed to examine the values and beliefs that distinguish countries and regions and their effect on social practices during the pandemic.

Future studies could continue this line of research by contrasting public and government opinions regarding the management of the pandemic and evaluating citizens’ perceptions and beliefs regarding the role that their leaders and the state should play when facing health and economic crises.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research for this paper was supported by the National Research and Development Agency (ANID) under FONDECYT Grant numbers 11181223, the Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies, COES (ANID/Fondap-15130009) and the Socioeconomic Transformations Observatory of the MPIfG in Chile (ANID/PCI/MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF SOCIETIES/MPG190012).

ORCID iDs

Jorge Atria

Juan Alfaro

Notes

Author biographies

Jorge Atria, PhD, is an assistant professor at the Department of Sociology, Universidad Diego Portales, and adjunct researcher at Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES). His research interests are Economic Sociology, Fiscal Sociology, and Cultural Sociology with focus on inequality, taxation, elites, and social structure. In 2021, he co-edited “Impuestos justos para el Chile que viene: Diagnósticos y desafíos tributarios para un nuevo pacto fiscal” (Fondo de Cultura Económica).

Juan Alfaro is a sociologist from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He is currently studying for a Master’s degree in Social Research at the Universidad Diego Portales. He is interested in elites and cultural consumption.

Magdalena Tapia is a sociologist from Pontifical Catholic University. Her work and research experience focus mainly on education, public policy, childhood, marketing and environment.

Raimundo Frei is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Universidad Diego Portales, Chile.

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