Background
Beyond the public health challenges it posed, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of public discourses, particularly regarding moral key terms such as freedom. Understanding how these terms, including freedom, are used across different forms of public communication is critical for promoting an informed dialogue during crises and reducing societal polarization.
Objective
This study aims to explore the usage of the key moral term freedom within public discourses in Switzerland. It examines the terms’ framing in official press releases, newspapers, and social media to map its usage, identifying discrepancies in the construction of its meaning. The results of this study could aid policymakers in the design of strategies for improving clarity and consistency in public reasoning, and reduce polarization in public discourses.
Methods
We analyzed three datasets with a NLP pipeline comprising lemmatization, co-occurrence analysis, and semantic network mapping: official press releases from the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (BAG), newspaper articles from major outlets retrieved via Factiva, and social media posts collected via CrowdTangle.
Results
The analysis revealed notable differences in how freedom was framed across datasets. Government press releases emphasized the need to balance public health responsibilities with personal autonomy, while newspapers highlighted the tension between restrictions and civil liberties. Social media discourse was marked by polarized views, with prominent themes of activism, distrust in authorities, and debates over individual versus collective freedoms.
Conclusions
The conceptualizations of freedom emerging from the data reflect tensions between individual rights and collective responsibilities during the pandemic. Inconsistent framing across different contexts may have both contributed to, and been shaped by, pre-existing tensions surrounding institutional trust, reinforcing patterns of discursive fragmentation. The study highlights the need for clearer communication and shared understanding of key moral terms such as freedom, which could help strengthen democratic processes and institutions.