The contestation of freedom during the COVID-19 pandemic

The discussions surrounding the measures against the COVID-19 pandemic are strongly dominated by the concept of freedom. Discussions on freedom focus on different aspects: the freedom of movement during a time of lockdowns, the freedom to access spaces without a QR-code, the freedom to make your own decisions with respect to taking the vaccine and to freely express your views on these matters on social media. The proposed paper explores how the value of freedom has become contested over time on Instagram during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study carries out a manual content analysis of images on Instagram in six European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, Poland). It analyzes not only how salient the conflict over freedom is, but also the form that this conflict takes, meaning the ways in which it is represented visually and how it is portrayed symbolically. The study links the findings to variations in the political-cultural contexts of these countries. It provides a novel insight in how social media, particularly the understudied platform Instagram, formed an important channel for opposing an illiberal turn in European countries.