Symbolic coping: Young people’s perspectives during the Covid-19 pandemic in three Central European countries

Abstract The aim of this study was to find out what interpretive repertoires young people use in the symbolic management of the pandemic. Qualitative research using several methods on a sample of 172 young people in three countries, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Austria, and the subsequent discursive analysis showed that young people symbolically coped during the Covid-19 pandemic with the help of widespread concepts such as cutting off, closing sci-fi and panic. The interpretations used by young people to symbolically deal with the pandemic are close to those present in the public discourse—the discourses of threat, loss, emotion—but there was also a search for the concepts and language for use by experts and the general public in communicating about the pandemic. There were no significant differences in the interpretations of life during the Covid-19 pandemic in the three Central European countries.