Crisis Communities: New Forms of Action During the COVID-19 Health Crisis

Crisis is an exceptional situation that creates a break in continuity with usual activities (Cros et al., 2019) in which the social system cannot solve with the usual solutions the problems that are necessary for its sustainability (Habermas, 1975). It challenges people’s view of reality (Weick, 1988), creates uncertainty about the future and is thus a major stressor. The COVID-19 crisis has a characteristic of its own, the rupture was both spatial and temporal. Overnight, millions of people found themselves confined to restricted spaces. For many of them, the time available for personal activities increased dramatically, creating a paradoxical situation of spatial compression and temporal expansion. During this crisis, Internet consumption has increased sharply (Bourdeau-Lepage, 2020), to communicate by videoconference, to search for information or to connect to groups of friends on social networks. Being alone together, during confinement, individuals mobilized online communities to support and entertain themselves, and to contain a virus on a global scale. Crises push individuals to improvize to find solutions by developing multiple interactions (Adrot and Garreau, 2010). In this situation, individuals mobilize their creativity (Drazin et al., 1999) and virtual communities are a favourable place for sharing the creativity of Internet users (Parmentier, 2015)…