Thomas Niehr

COVID-19 had an enormous impact on society around the globe. By 5th March 2023, when the WHO officially declared the pandemic emergency over, societies affected by it had been profoundly changed. The COVID-19 pandemic not only had medical consequences, but also significant effects related to the mechanisms involved in its discursive construction as a phenomenon of wide significance in various social arenas.
Reaching a highly polarized form, public debate on compulsory vaccination against COVID-19 constituted an essential component of mechanisms not only for stance-taking, for creating opportunities for self- and other-positioning, and for covering discursive positions, but also for subverting existing epistemic orders. The present volume reconstructs this complex discursive phenomenon with examples from Italy, Germany and the USA, and invites critical reflections on the way societies around the globe have faced the extreme crisis sparked by the pandemic.