Self-Isolation during the COVID-19 Pandemics: Everyday Discourse on a New Social Phenomenon among University Students

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic was the first experience for the largest part of the world’s population of a new disease that spread rapidly across continents, a global threat to which unprecedented restrictive measures were elaborated. The purpose of the study was to analyse the everyday discourse on self-isolation among student youth based on the Theory of Social Representations. The study was conducted in two time periods corresponding to two “waves” of the COVID-19 pandemic in Russia (“first wave”: from 18, June to 10, July, 2020, and “second wave”: from 12, October to 18, November, 2020). The sample included 275 Russian university students (9.5 % male) aged 17 to 27 years. The main tool to reveal the social representations was free associations technique. The survey was conducted in online format via Google-forms. Comparison of the structure and content of social representations on self-isolation as a new social phenomenon at different stages of the pandemic made it possible to reveal their emergence and dynamics among student youth: (1) the opposition between voluntariness and coercion was characteristic of the everyday understanding of selfisolation at the very beginning of the pandemic, and (2) psychological experiences associated with the pandemic and the self-isolation caused by it turn out to be key further. In general, research findings show that self-isolation is understood by university students as a search for “pluses” in a situation of forced restrictions.

About the authors

Irina A. Novikova

RUDN University

Author for correspondence.
Email: novikova-ia@rudn.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-5831-1547
SPIN-code: 7717-2834
Scopus Author ID: 35766733000
ResearcherId: Q-5276-2016

Ph.D. in Psychology, Associate Professor, Associate Professor at Psychology and Pedagogy Department, Philological Faculty

6, Miklukho-Maklaya st., Moscow, Russian Federation, 117198

Alexey L. Novikov

RUDN University

Email: novikov-al@rudn.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3482-5070
SPIN-code: 3416-1350
Scopus Author ID: 56005222400
ResearcherId: Q-5419-2016

Ph.D. in Philology, Associate Professor, Associate Professor at the General and Russian Linguistics Department, Philological Faculty

6, Miklukho-Maklaya st., Moscow, Russian Federation, 117198

Marianna E. Sachkova

Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy & Public Administration

Email: msachkova@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-2982-8410
SPIN-code: 3217-0087
Scopus Author ID: 14623093600
ResearcherId: J-9145-2013

Dr.Sc. in Psychology, Professor, Professor of the Department of General Psychology

82, bldg.1, Vernadsky Ave., Moscow, Russian Federation, 119571

Nikolay V. Dvoryanchikov

Moscow State University of Psychology & Education

Email: dvorian@gmail.com
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1462-5469
SPIN-code: 6908-0030
Scopus Author ID: 56275479900
ResearcherId: D-1683-2009

PhD in Psychology, Associate Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Legal and Forensic Psychology

29, Sretenka st., Moscow, Russian Federation, 127051

Elizaveta B. Berezina

Sunway University

Email: elizab@sunway.edu.my
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1972-8133
SPIN-code: 8996-3250
Scopus Author ID: 56275370100
ResearcherId: Q-6331-2017

PhD in Psychology, Senior Lecturer of Department of Psychology

5, Jalan Universiti, Bandar Sunway Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia, 47500

Inna B. Bovina

Moscow State University of Psychology & Education

Email: innabovina@yandex.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-9497-6199
SPIN-code: 9663-3747
Scopus Author ID: 8569930800
ResearcherId: H-4433-2013

Dr.Sc. in Psychology, is Research Director, Associate Professor, Department of Clinical and Legal Psychology, Law of the Legal Psychology Faculty

29, Sretenka st., Moscow, Russian Federation, 127051

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Supplementary files

Supplementary Files
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1. Fig. Distribution of search results (frequency per million word forms) from 1920 to 2022 in the main corpus of National Corpus of the Russian Language for the query “self-isolation” (graph built without

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Copyright (c) 2024 Novikova I.A., Novikov A.L., Sachkova M.E., Dvoryanchikov N.V., Berezina E.B., Bovina I.B.

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