Biopolitics and the Construction of (Mis)Trust: Public Discourse Regarding Pandemic Governance in Saint Petersburg, Russia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study is dedicated to the development of (dis)trust of the measures taken by the authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the concept of biopolitics, we analyze reactions of social network users and their communication with the authorities. For this purpose, throughout one year we have studied posts in one of the official public pages of Saint Petersburg authorities. The posts concerned various anti-COVID measures: vaccination, mask requirement, distance learning, and other restrictions, and comments on them. For the analysis, we used the AntConc program. Based on the findings, we identified three discourses. The most prominent two are those of dissent and resistance. These are based on users’ distrust, doubts, and unwillingness to follow the prescribed measures. Within these two discourses, users communicate with different public authorities more actively. Communication follows the same pattern: in response to questions, the authorities provide template references to legislative decrees regulating specific restrictions and vaccination, which does not build trust and further exacerbates the discontent among users. The discourse of consent is based on expressing solidarity with the measures taken and revolves around some users persuading others of the benefits of vaccination, social distancing, and face masks. As there are virtually no opportunities for active and legal resistance to biopolitical measures, we presume that in practice discursive resistance results in the invention of evasion tactics: not wearing a mask, not vaccinating, trying to get a hold of a fake QR code, etc. La construction biopolitique de la confiance et de la méfiance : Le discours public sur la gouvernance pendant la pandémie à Saint-Pétersbourg Cette étude est consacrée à la construction de la confiance et de la méfiance à l'égard des mesures prises par les autorités pendant la pandémie de COVID-19, dans le cadre de la ville russe de Saint-Pétersbourg. Les auteurs analysent les réactions des utilisateurs des réseaux sociaux et leur communication avec les autorités sous l’angle de la biopolitique, plaçant cet article à la croisée des idées de Foucault et d’Agamben. Pour ce faire, les auteurs ont étudié pendant un an les messages postés sur l'un des groupes de réseaux sociaux officiels des autorités de Saint-Pétersbourg. Ils concernaient diverses mesures anti-COVID : vaccination, port du masque, apprentissage en ligne, ainsi que d'autres restrictions. Les résultats de l’analyse opérée avec le programme AntConc ont permis aux auteurs d’identifier trois discours, dont les deux plus importants sont ceux de la dissidence et de la résistance, qui augmentent grandement la propension des utilisateurs à communiquer avec les autorités. Les auteurs font l’inventaire du continuum de discours qu’ils ont relevés, allant des discours libéraux et orientés vers la compréhension de la biopolitique comme une norme de gestion efficace aux discours disciplinaires et à la perception des mesures et des restrictions comme des tentatives de contrôle. Ces derniers discours sont fondés sur la méfiance, les doutes et la réticence des utilisateurs à suivre les mesures prescrites. La communication des autorités, qui se concentrait sur ses actes législatifs, n'a pas suscité la confiance et a augmenté le mécontentement général, tandis que les utilisateurs, voyant un manque de résistance active aux mesures biopolitiques, ont eu recours à des tactiques d'évasion telles que le refus du port de masques et l'utilisation de faux codes QR.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".