Towards a Social Dramaturgy of Digital Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Romania
The COVID-19 pandemic, with its induced lockdowns, significantly changed the way the educational act was performed. Using both technological references in phenomenology and features on the relationship between performer and audience, encountered in social dramaturgy, this chapter follows the valences brought by the change in education in the online environment. Based on an exploratory approach made through discourse analysis with seven Romanian professors and 20 Romanian students, two major discursive repertoires can be identified: on the one hand, the one regarding the return to face-to-face courses and, on the other hand, the discourse on maintaining online courses. The discourse regarding the return to classical education is supported by all the interviewed teachers but also by the students who had connectivity problems during the pandemic. The favorable discourse for online classes was supported by most students, especially for temporal and financial reasons. This exploratory pattern confirms that even such choices have a socio-economic character, not necessarily an individual one.