Open AccessMask Refusal Backlash: The Politicization of Face Masks in the American Public Sphere during the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Author(s) -
Caleb Scoville,
Andrew McCumber,
Razvan Amironesei,
June Jeon
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
socius
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2378-0231
DOI - 10.1177/23780231221093158
Subject(s) - backlash , covid-19 , politics , polarization (electrochemistry) , public opinion , pandemic , public sphere , political science , german , face (sociological concept) , psychology , social psychology , sociology , law , history , social science , computer science , disease , medicine , infectious disease (medical specialty) , chemistry , pathology , artificial intelligence , archaeology
This research shows how face masks took on discursive political significance during the early stages of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic in the United States. The authors argue that political divisions over masks cannot be understood by looking to partisan differences in mask-wearing behaviors alone. Instead, they show how the mask became a political symbol enrolled into patterns of affective polarization. This study relies on qualitative and computational analyses of opinion articles ( n = 7,970) and supplemental analyses of Twitter data, the transcripts of major news networks, and longitudinal survey data. First, the authors show that antimask discourse was consistently marginal and that backlash against mask refusal came to prominence and did not decline even as masking behaviors normalized and partly depolarized. Second, they show that backlash against mask refusal, rather than mask refusal itself, was the primary way masks were discussed in relation to national electoral, governmental, and partisan themes.