Introduction

In late 2019, the virus SARS-CoV-2, often called COVID-19, was detected in Wuhan, China. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2020) declared the spread of the virus a pandemic in March 2020 (Azoulay et al., 2020; Strålin et al., 2020; The Public Health Agency of Sweden, 2020; WHO, 2020), leading to the initiation of national lockdowns and strict restrictions in most countries.

By May 2022, more than 515 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, including more than six million deaths, had been reported to the WHO (2022). Much research from an epidemiological and medical perspective has been published. Reports in social media, television, radio news, and the daily press, have described the global situation. However, there is a lack of knowledge of how the media described people's everyday lives during this period. What ideologies regarding social identities, people's relations, actions, and economy, in ordinary life, are constructed in the media discourse? Fairclough (2015) defined the term “ideology” as a set of beliefs and attitudes, while hegemony is defined as the social struggle for power and dominance waged for certain ideologies to be influenced. According to Fairclough there is an ideological hegemony when connections among cultural ideas, norms, talk and material practice can be seen.