The emergence and spread of a new pandemic, COVID-19, have raised topics of concern for health professionals, policy makers and publics across the globe. Governments have struggled to find the right policies to stop disease transmission, but all have introduced social distancing. In the United Kingdom this has come to be understood as staying at home and, when outside, maintaining a physical distance of approximately two metres between oneself and others. In this article, the authors examine the emergence of this new social representation as portrayed in one UK broadsheet and one tabloid with the widest circulation: The Times and The Sun, between early March and early April 2020. Using social representations theory and thematic analysis, the authors show that social distancing struggled to emerge from underneath government obfuscation. It was first seen as a threat to normal life, which in modernity is predicated on mobility; it was later portrayed as a threat to social order; and finally perceived as a burden that, like the lockdown (its conceptual twin), needed to be lifted.

新大流行COVID-19的出现和传播引起了全球卫生专业人员，决策者和公众关注的话题。各国政府一直在努力寻找正确的政策来阻止疾病传播，但是所有国家都在引入社会隔离。在英国，这被理解为呆在家里，而在室外时，彼此之间保持大约两米的物理距离。在本文中，作者研究了这种新的社会代表制的出现，如英国的一本通俗版和发行量最大的一本小报所描绘的：《时代》和《太阳报》在2020年3月上旬至2020年4月上旬之间。作者使用社会表征理论和主题分析表明，社会疏离难以摆脱政府迷惑的根源。首先，它被视为对正常生活的威胁，现代生活中以流动性为基础。后来被描绘成对社会秩序的威胁；最终被视为负担，就像锁定（其概念上的孪生兄弟）一样，需要解除。