Crisis communication and crisis management during COVID-19 (original) (raw)
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Crisis communication and crisis management during COVID-19 1
Global Discourse, 2021
This paper presents results from a comparative and qualitative discourse-historical analysis of governmental crisis communication in Austria, Germany, France, Hungary and Sweden, during the global COVID-19 pandemic lockdown from March 2020 to May 2020 (a ‘discourse strand’). By analysing a sample of important speeches and press conferences by government leaders (all performing as the ‘face of crisis management’), it is possible to deconstruct a range of discursive strategies announcing/legitimising restrictive measures in order to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic where everybody is in danger of falling ill, regardless of their status, position, education and so forth. I focus on four frames that have been employed to mitigate the ‘dread of death’ (Bauman, 2006) and counter the ‘denial of death’ (Becker, 1973/2020): a ‘religious frame’, a ‘dialogic frame’, a frame emphasising ‘trust’, and a frame of ‘leading a war’. These interpretation frameworks are all embedded in ‘renationalising’ tendencies, specifically visible in the EU member states where even the Schengen Area was suddenly abolished (in order to ‘keep the virus out’) and borders were closed. Thus, everybody continues to be confronted with national biopolitics and body politics (Wodak, 2021).
Crisis Communication during Covid–19
Hadmérnök
Early in 2020, the Covid–19 epidemic started, posing many challenges for civilisation. The pandemic caused a paradigm change in many ways, unavoidably increasing people’s uncertainty and worry about a new global order. Along with stopping the virus, governments aiming to contain the pandemic had to deal appropriately with the infodemic scenario, which supported several pseudo-scientific opinions among substantial numbers of people. The spread of more and more nonsense fake news has eroded the trust in the institutions, which has led to a prolonged phase of the epidemic’s end. It is yet unknown how long the coronavirus epidemic will have an impact on daily life as of the time of writing, in the summer of 2022, more outbreaks have been brought on by mask use and vaccination refusal. Because of this, controlling the crisis and reducing the harm the infodemic creates depends on effective government crisis communication. This essay attempts to illustrate effective crisis communication st...
Frontiers in Communication: Political communication and society, 2020
The pandemic spread of COVID-19 grew inexorably to be the main topic of global news after it was first identified in 2019 in China. This article analyzes how heads of state and heads of government in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden framed the problems and solutions to the spread of the virus during the pandemic's initial phase. A Foucauldian-inspired method of problematization guides the narrative analysis, complemented by governmentality, risk communication, and taskscape theories. The results of the analysis show how the individual is conceptualized as a central actor and whose practices are framed as crucial to overcoming the crisis. Through invoking a sense of responsibility, sacrifice, and current life during the pandemic as a difficult time, the speeches allude to how people through changed behavior can/sould, contribute to the greater good. The individual is positioned as a key cause of, and solution to the problem; however, construing the individual as an indispensable actor to overcoming the crisis also means that the individual is laid open for reprehension. To facilitate the spread of the containment message and to support individual understanding of overt risk, the four countries' leadership also augment their conceptualization of the crisis with ideas of national identity to inspire the individual to contribute to the "battle" and "defeat" of the virus. The leadership does also embrace the important role of the national government in controlling the outbreak and the role of science, and trust in science, are also emphasized. The speeches analyzed in this paper can be understood as governance technologies; the spatial disciplining and self-governance demanded by the regimes create subject positions for individuals or groups. A debate on the rights and responsibilities of the citizen is another aspect that comes to the fore, considering how the containment strategies in all four countries proclaim the individual as a core agent in circumscribing the virus, and hence the individual's activities as potentially damaging to the fight against the pandemic. This throws into question the connection between individual autonomy as a democratic right and disciplinary mechanisms, sometimes phrased encouragingly and at other times in an enforcing way.
Book chapter in "Political Discourse and Media in Times of Crisis"- Edited by Sofia Iordanidou Nael Jebril Emmanouil Takas Anthem Global Media and Communication Studies, 2023
Abstract This chapter presents the findings of a cross-national analysis of the discourse of five political leaders (USA, UK, Germany, Greece, New Zealand) during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, as evidenced in their public statements, announcements and messaging related to the unfolding of epidemic events. Through a discourse analysis of 16 pandemic-related political leaders' texts, this study uncovers how the selected political actors employed discourse as a means to strategically appropriate the critical exigence and as a tool to achieve legitimation and exert persuasive impact on their audiences through speech, arguments, rhetorical, discursive, and meta-discursive elements. The study's results indicate that strategic intentionality and legitimation are integral parts of pandemic-related political discourse. Collected data provide evidence that political rhetoric and discursive tropes were strategically employed by all political leaders in their effort to define the situation, manage the issue, influence public attitudes and policies, establish the core values of the nation and their governance, and ultimately, "construct" and "re-figure" the pandemic reality as experienced at the national level. Despite commonalities, the leaders employed diversified, even antithetical rhetorical and legitimation responses to the public health crisis and appropriated the exigence through different discursive choices and assessments of audience, purpose and message.
The Pandemic Lockdown Discourse Space: A Critical Cognitive-pragmatic Analysis
2020
Recently, a new coronavirus disease COVID-19 has emerged as a respiratory infection with significant concern for global public health hazards. WHO was alarmed with the growing curve of confirmed cases and death tolls that have been globally reported. During this pandemic, ‘social distancing’ and lockdown were encouraged to flatten the curve which has had major social, political, and economic consequences. Drawing on data from PM Boris Johnson’s and President Donald Trump’s public speeches after WHO’s declaration of the pandemic state, the current study aimed to explore the conceptual and spatial representation of lockdown during the outbreak of COVID-19 in the UK and U.S. from a cognitive perspective. Based on a spatial-temporal and axiological model, this study examined the discursive strategies used by the UK and U.S. governments to legitimize the countries’ full or partial lockdown. Applying Cap’s Proximization Theory, a cognitive-pragmatic model of threat construction, this stud...
Teorija in praksa, 2021
During a pandemic, it is essential that most people respect the measures in place so as to keep the health crisis at bay. Still, a consensus must exist in society that the measures imposed by government are truly needed, just and legitimate, with several factors affecting whether this is achieved. In the article, we present the results of qualitative research (23 in-depth interviews) conducted in Slovenia at the peak of the first lockdown, focusing on how the study participants (women who were living alone during the first lockdown) perceived communication from the government and the public health authorities that comprised the official crisis communication group for managing the pandemic in Slovenia. The results present critical mistakes in communication that shaped trust in the official communicators and failed to motivate and encourage respondents to comply with the recommended and prescribed protective measures.
The Pandemic of Argumentation, 2022
This chapter intends to provide an argumentative perspective on the justification of securitization by Southern EU’s political leaders in times of a public health crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic by examining instances of public discourses, specifically addresses to the nation of four EU leaders with different ideological positioning, in different social settings of the European South. Based on the theory of securitization, we perceive public debate as a polylogical phenomenon where multiple actors, from multiple (ideological) positions, in multiple times and spaces interact, creating a complex network of public communication while expressing and supporting their claims. Through this prism, our aim is to shed light on argumentative polylogues by unveiling whether and how the state of emergency has been justified. We employ the frame of the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) to Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) (Reisigl & Wodak, 2016) to study the socio-historically conditions agains...
PLOS ONE, 2021
This study looks at population response to government containment strategies during initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in four high-trust Northern European countries–Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden–with special emphasis on expressions of governmental trust. Sentiment analysis and topic modeling analysis were performed using Twitter data from three phases during the initial European lockdown, and results were compared over time and between countries. Findings show that, in line with existing theory, assertive crisis responses and proactive communication were generally well-received, whereas tentative crisis responses or indications by the authorities that the crisis was manageable were generally met with suspicion. In addition, while government support was high in all countries during the height of the crisis, messages critical of the government as well as conspiracy theories were nevertheless widely circulated. Importantly, countries with the least assertive strat...
The language of leadership in a deadly pandemic
Strategy & Leadership, 2020
Purpose This paper explores the rhetorical and strategic nature of the language political and business leaders used during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic – or what we refer to as their pandemic-speak. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws opportunistically on examples of communications that have appeared variously in letters to shareholders, tweets, and public comments of CEOs of major companies, and in press briefings of several political leaders. Findings Good and bad examples of the exercise of leadership through pandemic-speak are presented. Some of the examples discussed are characterised variously by confected positivity, hubris, hyperbole, misinformation, recklessness, appeal to patriotic values, and abuse of the adjectives “unprecedented” and “extraordinary.” The term “COVID-19” is used as an ideographic “whipping post” to deflect attention from the implication of leaders in the inadequate level of preparedness for the pandemic. Originality/value This paper...