The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a discursive change in the representation of urban-rural mobilities in the Austrian public media. Before the pandemic, a narrative of ‘rural decline’ had dominated the media discourse. Media have since changed this narrative to one of counterurbanisation as a result of the (perceived) effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on residential location choices. However, in contrast to media perceptions, scientific debates were more reluctant to identify a Covid-induced counterurban movement. In this paper, we take the opposition between the media representation and the scientific evidence as a starting point for a critical investigation of the media representation of counterurbanisation in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Following the approach of discourse coalitions, we investigated the actors and the coalitions they had formed to promote a Covid-induced ‘counterurbanisation story’. We could identify two coalitions that created two variations of the Covid-induced ‘counterurbanisation story’: a prudent and an idealised discourse. These two discourses were promoted by different actors with different interests. Through our findings, the paper adds another layer to study of the construction of a ‘counterurbanisation story’.

中文翻译：

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质疑 Covid-19 引发的“反城市化故事”：奥地利公共媒体中推动新反城市运动的话语联盟

Covid-19大流行的爆发导致奥地利公共媒体中城乡流动性的表述发生了话语变化。在大流行之前，“农村衰落”的叙述主导了媒体话语。由于 Covid-19 大流行对居住地点选择的（感知）影响，媒体将这种叙述改为逆城市化。然而，与媒体的看法相反，科学辩论更不愿意确定新冠病毒引发的反城市运动。在本文中，我们以媒体表述与科学证据之间的对立为起点，对 Covid-19 大流行背景下的反城市化媒体表述进行批判性调查。按照话语联盟的方法，我们调查了参与者以及他们为宣传新冠引发的“逆城市化故事”而组成的联盟。我们可以识别出两个联盟，它们创造了新冠引发的“逆城市化故事”的两种变体：谨慎的和理想化的话语。这两种话语是由具有不同利益的不同行为者推动的。通过我们的发现，本文为“逆城市化故事”的构建研究增添了另一层内容。