Public discourse in the context of the coronavirus pandemic: the parrhesia return

The public coronavirus discourse analysis is important for understanding the characteristics of modern social communication. The content dynamics has specially interest in the first months of the pandemic. In these processes, reality understanding is formed and broadcast. This understanding is done always from some position, in a certain sense. The self-awareness formation process is nothing more than the positioning of such an understanding. In this regard, any content of social communication in a sense, relatively speaking, is like fakes. Therefore, it is important to shift the emphasis in the analysis from the criteria of the truth of network information to the phenomenon of "taking the word" and responsibility for what is expressed. In this regard, it is useful to use the concept of parrhesia as a free and responsible statement. This opens up the possibility of analyzing the paradoxical nature of individual rights to opinion freedom and social control, as well as building the necessary balance of rights and responsibilities in public social communication. Such an analysis shows that the coronary virus pandemic not only fully fits into this general global civilizational trend of alarm and horrorization, but also strengthened them. At the same time, along with large-scale horrorization, its alternative sprouts, which is clearly expressed in the indicated trend of public coronavirus discourse. This is a request for a balanced responsible word or even silence, in other words – a request for manifestation in a public discourse of personal freedom as responsibility. In the context of total digitalization, this responsibility is taking on more and more dimensions, which are the most serious challenges to traditional ideas about morality and law. In the modern digitalized information society, positive parrhesia is not the privilege of a few, but the moral testing duty of the word-takers.