CoronaCare study protocol: an ethnographic study of the risks to and potential for social health during the COVID-19 pandemic

IntroductionGerman government regulations such as physical distancing and limited group numbers, designed to curb the spread of COVID-19, have had far-reaching consequences for the very foundations of social life. They have, to name only a few, transformed greetings and goodbyes, blurred private and public worlds, and complicated basic communication with mandatory mask wearing. The ethnographic study CoronaCare investigates how these sociopolitical measures affect social health, a form of health which unfolds through and across social relations. It explores how caring as a fundamental human activity and one integral to sustaining social health is impacted when in-person and person-to-person contacts are restricted and everyone is radically redefined as at risk from others and a risk to others. It explores care relationships, relationships involving the giving or receiving of care in everyday life, institutional settings such as an assisted living facility, and informal settings, such as a housing block. Inside of the pandemic, relationships are a pivotal site at which the negotiation of caring and risk is intensified and where the consequences for social health and social life more generally are pronounced.Methods and analysisThis ethnographic project aims to understand the tensions that arise in the lives of individuals and communities living under the sociopolitical regulations and to analyse the tacit forms of practice that individuals and communities develop to uphold social health. Fueled by citizen science, the ethnography uses a variety of methods namely telephone and video interviews with 60–70 research participants, the collection of ethnographic material including video and audio diaries, storyboards, first-person camera footage, photographs and a survey to enrich the sample description based on the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire. The analysis will draw on elements of grounded theory and through the aid of the qualitative software MAXQDA it will rigorously document and explain how the social regulations are (re)shaping our ability to be cared for and to care for one another. The survey data will be analysed through the use of the quantitative software programme R.Ethics and disseminationThe ethics committee of the Brandenburg Medical School Theodor Fontane has approved the project (E-01-20200605). The dissemination strategy includes publications in medical, sociological and research methods journals, as well as a stakeholder discussion with political and civil society leaders where the research team will present its recommendations for future pandemic preparedness.

THE PHENOMENON OF DISRUPTED COMMUNICATION IN THE NOVEL “EFFI BRIEST” BY THEODOR FONTANE AND IN THE FILM ADAPTATION BY RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER: SPEECH AND GESTURE

The subject of this article’s comparative intermedial analysis is the phenomenon of disrupted communication in the novel by the German writer Theodor Fontane “Effi Briest” (1895) and in the film adaptation of this work by Rainer Werner Fassbinder “Fontane Effi Briest” (1974). The article consists of five parts: 1) introduction; 2) analysis of dialogues in Fontane’s novel; 3) description of the means of creating the effect of disrupted communication in Fassbinder’s film; 4) comparative analysis of some fragments of two works by the method of close reading; 5) conclusions. Methodologically, the research is based on the achievements of the theory of communication, carpalistics, comparative and intermedial approaches to the study of film adaptations. The main point of the article is that the effect of disrupted communication, which is observed in numerous dialogues of Fontane’s novel, is also created by visual means in Fassbinder’s film, among which a significant place is occupied by a gesture. The gesture of turning away deserves special attention: the characters of the film turn away from each other, turn their backs to the interlocutor and the viewer, turn to their reflection. The unconventionality and intensity of such gestures accentuate the problematic nature of communication between the characters. This structure, peripheral in Fontane’s work, becomes central in the film of Fassbinder, grasping the viewers’ attention. In this regard, the article adds to a traditional discussion about the hierarchical relationship between a literary text and its film adaptation.

A Nation Connected

This chapter opens with an illustration of the Prussian government’s use of telegraph networks to unite the German nation during the war with France in 1870 by ensuring the timely and ubiquitous distribution of news. Otto von Bismarck and Generalpostmeister Heinrich Stephan then sought to build upon this unifying conception of telegraphic communication by improving and homogenizing the new Kaiserreich’s network, but they soon faced obstacles from within and outside the state. On the one hand, the federal structure of the new empire granted Bavaria and Württemberg the right to manage their own networks. On the other hand, the increasingly global network upon which trade and finance depended, and the news cartel established between Havas, Reuters, and Wolffs Telegraphisches Büro limited the imperial administration’s ability to manage the cost and nature of information circulating on its lines. These issues, and particularly the economic crisis of 1873, led to conflicts in the Reichstag, where deputies openly questioned the technology’s capacity to ‘annihilate space’ and formed alliances based upon the sections of society which they believed should or should not possess an advantage in communication. At a local level, meanwhile, government efforts to build new, more imposing, post and telegraph buildings alongside subsidiary offices threatened the business community’s privileged position within the urban landscape. The distance and time involved in the transmission of telegrams came to define one’s local and social status—as shown vividly in the novels of Theodor Fontane in the early 1880s and in the popular press.