Competing discourses of COVID-19 induced learning-from-home experiences in mothers’ online discussions

Abstract

Previous discourse-analytic research has demonstrated that online platforms are arenas where mothers exchange and negotiate knowledge about a myriad of issues, and actively give and take informational and emotional support (Jaworska, 2018; Lyons, 2020; Mackenzie, 2018). Aligning with such research and our ongoing projects that investigate how women cope with the COVID-19 pandemic in online fora, this paper specifically examines how mothers in Hong Kong portray and share with peers their struggles to juggle different responsibilities in the initial stage of the pandemic (January – February 2020). Using corpus-assisted discourse analysis (Parington, 2004), we first identify the focal themes in a corpus of 400+ discussion threads from an online forum used by mothers in Hong Kong. As indicated by high frequency keywords, mothers’ discussions centre around school closures, homeschooling (or learning from home) and childcaring. We then analyse some of these keywords (e.g. ‘school’, ‘work’ and ‘home’) alongside other discursive strategies more qualitatively to look at how mothers represent their experiences and interact socially. Arising from these discussions are two competing discourses of COVID-19-induced learning-from-home experiences. One portrays learning-from-home experiences as wholly negative whilst another sees such experiences through a positive lens. The former highlights various problems associated with learning from home, such as wasted school fees, mental health issues and worsening parent-child relationships. The latter puts forward that the COVID-19 pandemic is a unique chance for mothers (and parents) to rethink their parenting approaches and decisions. In discussing the discursive resources used in constructing these competing discourses, we also tap into the interactional, relational nature of such discourses. We argue that these discourses, which reflect mothers’ experiential knowledge of the pandemic, are deployed by mothers as tools for building solidarity and uplifting peers.