By Pauline Garvey

A St Patrick’s Day ‘like no other’ during the Coronavirus pandemic, source reuters.com (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-ireland/deserted-st-patricks-day-streets-highlight-irish-hospitality-woes-idUSKBN21431F)

On Thursday the 12th March, the Irish government announced that schools, colleges and other public buildings in the Republic of Ireland were to close in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak in the country. Outdoor meetings or activities of up to 500 people were cancelled, and indoor meetings of 100 people or more were banned. These measures were followed by the closure of pubs on the 15th March, the grounding of airlines and the closure of cafes and restaurants amid the anticipation of an extensive lockdown of all public gatherings in an effort to slow the onward spread of the disease.

In his address to the nation on the 9pm news bulletin on 17th March, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar commented that this year’s St Patrick’s Day was ‘like no other’, where parades in towns and cities were cancelled, pubs were shut and celebrations confined to people’s homes. In an effort to introduce a degree of normalcy, the national broadcaster (RTE) showed short video clips of children parading in their back gardens waving flags, while other householders put ‘Happy St Patrick’s Day’ signs in kitchen windows for passing pedestrians. Social celebrations on this national holiday moved from the public arena of towns and cities to the private sphere of homes and gardens.

These are unsettling times and not surprisingly, in a situation where social distancing is enforced, online media has become the main site where people actually communicate. Whatsapp groups among family members, friends, work colleagues, school and sports’ groups were invigorated and the announcement of government measures sparked a flood of messages between people as they shared information, asked each other if the information they had received is correct or discussed plans for the care of relatives. Jokes, memes, gifs, news articles, videos and advice from purported medical professionals was (and still is) swapped, shared and commented upon. Often the same content circulated from one WhatsApp group to another, although very little of it was new. Arguably, most of the Covid-19 content that is passed between groups is composed of jokes, uplifting images, stories and funny videos.

Anthropologists have argued that here we can see one role of the media more generally. The activities of our daily lives maintain a sense of reliability and continuity, and these activities are managed through predictable order and taken-for-granted routines. According to the media scholar Roger Silverstone for example, the integration of television news bulletins provides a level of predictable routine that informs the audience of sources of anxiety while simultaneously offering reassurance that these dangers will be successfully combated.^[1]

WhatsApp is different in several interesting ways, however. Unlike news bulletins that ‘address the nation’, WhatsApp messaging provides a feeling of direct participation.^[2] Instead of posting or announcing or informing, on WhatsApp, people are speaking directly to known others, who often respond immediately, providing a sense of an ongoing conversation. These types of exchanges allow for more intimate and individualised communication.^[3]  In Ireland, health officials have adopted this mode of direct communication to speak to people directly and the Minister for Health (Simon Harris) circulated a WhatsApp message to urge people to stay indoors and maintain social distancing on 22nd March. Also, the WhatsApp groups that sprang into activity during the lockdown often consist of jokes, thumbs-up and emojis. Indeed, very little about the interaction seems to be about acquiring news and most of it is far more about sharing the emotional burden of what is going on. The sheer number, variety and frequency of WhatsApp messages in various groups seems to suggest, then, that it is the practice of being in touch that is more important than the actual content of these messages. One 70-year-old woman told me that she forwarded short videos that were ‘rubbish’ and even mildly offensive but circulated them to her groups anyhow because her niece had sent them to her.  People laugh or forward frightening statistics regarding how many will contract the disease while also wishing others well and commenting on the exceptional circumstances we are living in. WhatsApp in other words allows a kind of affective venting that is difficult to express elsewhere.

^[1] Silverstone, Roger 1994 Television and Everyday Life New York and London: Routledge.

^[2] For a comparable argument regarding Twitter see Rosa, J. 2015 Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States, American Ethnologist Volume 00 Number 0, pp. 4-16.

^[3] The World Health Organisation has launched a dedicated messaging service in Arabic, English, French and Spanish with WhatsApp partners to inform the public about the virus. In order to activate the app, you have to text ‘hi’ to the relevant number. See https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/who-health-alert-brings-covid-19-facts-to-billions-via-whatsapp, accessed 8/4/20

To mark and celebrate World Menopause Day, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Association (INMA) in collaboration with Loretta Dignam, founder of the organisation the Menopause Hub held an evening event entitled ‘#No Taboo’. To this event Dignam invited speakers who are specialists in the area including a dietitian, a consultant nurse from the NHS (UK) and singer Mary Coughlan amongst others.

Coinciding with the event, the INMA issued a position paper to assist their members and other women in the workplace to recognise the issue, noting that:

“…there are over 300,000 women working in Ireland between the ages of 45 and 64, and around 80% of those will experience symptoms leading up to menopause.  We would like to work with employers to create positive employment policies, as we do with other health and wellbeing-related issues. Currently there is an absence of policies on this issue.” ^[1]

One of the objectives of the event was to remove the perceived taboos surrounding menopause and encourage members of the general public to engage with such issues. The event was fully booked, and not only did women turn up in numbers, but in some cases their partners were anxious for them to attend. One woman’s husband picked her up from work and surprised her with a ticket and spent the evening ‘wandering around town’ while waiting for her.

A couple of issues were notable about the event. Firstly, except for the son of one of the speakers, no men attended. This is remarkable considering that half the world’s population is affected by menopause and indeed as it was reported later that menopausal women are ‘the fastest growing demographic section in the world’ (Hourican 2019). What other physical or medical condition would attract an audience of exclusively one sex?

Secondly, the keynote given by Barbara Taylor, a retired gynaecologist and writer, was memorable. In the talk itself, and later followed up in national media, Taylor made the point that ‘…most of the conversations we do have, are misplaced. We spend too much time talking about HRT versus no HRT, about breast cancer risks, even debating whether or not menopause is a ‘Thing’. In fact, we should be talking about heart health, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s’. Taylor’s point is not that issues surrounding HRT are unimportant, but that they eclipse other equally important health concerns such as the risk of cardiovascular disease after reaching menopause and the higher occurrence of Alzheimer’s disease among women than among men.  One of the most striking and memorable results of the event therefore was the light it shone on the absences  and silences that surround menopause.

References:

Emily Hourican 11/11/19 ‘Why women know nothing about the menopause’ The Irish Independent (available online at https://www.independent.ie/life/health-wellbeing/health-features/women-know-nothing-about-menopause-then-it-hits-them-over-the-head-like-a-ton-of-bricks-38674567.html, accessed 11/11/19)

^[1] https://inmo.ie/Home/Index/217/13535