We’re not heroes, we’re just doing our job: analysis of social workers’ discourses about their profession in online communities

Abstract The focus of the paper is how social professionals perceive their profession and its external judgment or recognition in the times of COVID-19. We analyse social workers’ comments in online professional communities on social media platforms. The web-based content analysis covered a 3 year period including the pandemic, and it is based on 6 692 online comments. According to our results, the entire comment stream is characterized by a mixed tone with a strong critical edge. The content analysis showed that Hirshman’s theory provides a productive analytic framework to observe loyalty and voice and frame different levels of dissatisfaction and corrective mechanisms. Thus, we found four overarching phases and attitudes with moderate, strengthening, strong, and fading voice. Different intensities of loyalty and voice mirrored different stages and waves of the epidemic. Though the results of the content analysis resonate with previous research findings based on more conventional methods in many ways, they added further depth to domestic and international knowledge. While social workers’ perception of their situation and prestige of social work was overwhelmingly negative, a method of coping with their burdens was through professional pride, solidarity, cohesion, self-compensation and compassion for clientele.