ABSTRACT
COVID-19 has changed the ways we deal with even the simplest social situations. Isolated in our houses, we had to rethink the ways of socialising and communicating, creating new strategies to cope with feeling lonely and significantly changing our digital behaviours. In order to understand the sociocultural implications of the first wave of COVID-19, this chapter focusses on the study of everyday communication and sociality during the lockdown. Through the qualitative analysis of 150 diaries written by Italian students, it attempts to answer the following research questions: (1) What were mediated and non-mediated forms of sociality developed during lockdown? (2) What was the role played by digital media in managing social relations in time of quarantine?
The findings showed that the digital media played an essential supporting role to all the practices and activities that emerged during the confinement and highlighted the emergence of several forms of mediated social proximity, which offset against the effects of physical distance. Moreover, they pointed out that the lockdown contributed to the rediscovery of some traditional non-mediated activities carried out with family members or cohabitants, often supported by digital platforms.
