COVID Memory in Belgium

Dr. Magali Beylat (ULB, Belgium)

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on people’s life worldwide, but what do people remember of this period? Collective memory, which we define here as shared individual memory of events, is influenced by the way people experienced the events, but also by their past and current attitudes. A key factor that shaped people’s attitudes during the pandemic, and thus probably their experience during this period, is the trust they felt with respect to the different actors of the pandemic. The present research aimed to examine the shared themes in people’s memories of COVID-19 pandemic and how these themes relate to trust.

We collected data through Facebook ads, asking people living in Belgium during the COVID-19 pandemic (N= 106) to report memories they had of this period. Participants also indicated the emotions they associated with each memory. We then measured their trust in various actors: government, health institutions, scientists, traditional media, and social media.

To analyze our data, we turned to a descending hierarchical classification using the IRAMUTEQ text analysis software. This analysis classifies text segments based on the co-occurrence of words, enabling us to identify shared themes in the memories. The results reveal seven distinct themes: two related to medical aspects of the COVID-19, four related to the experience of being confined, and one theme concerning narratives around the manipulation of the media. We also explored whether mentions of these themes were associated with trust and emotions. The themes related differently with trust, the last theme being especially associated with low trust in all actors but high trust in social media. Interestingly, negative emotions were mostly associated with themes related to the medical aspects of the COVID-19 and the manipulation of the media, but hardly with themes related to being confined.