This book examines the challenges of communicating risk and crisis messages during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide recommendations for managing future global health crises. Given that outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics are global crises that require global solutions, the book suggests that the world community needs to build resilient crisis management institutions and message management systems. Through international case studies, in-depth interviews, textual, content, narrative and document analysis, the book provides comprehensive accounts of how normative risk communication strategies were invoked, applied, disrupted, questioned, and changed during the COVID- 19 pandemic. It explores themes including crisis preparedness, outbreak communication, lockdown messages, communication uncertainty, risk message strategies and the challenges of information disorders to show that trust in supranational and national institutions is crucial for the effective management of future global public health crises. A thorough assessment of the multiple challenges faced by public health authorities and audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, this book will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, and students in the field of Risk, Crisis and Health Communication and Public Health and Disaster Management.

This book examines how we design and deliver health communication messages relating to outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics. We have experienced major changes to how the public receives and searches for information about health crises over the last twelve decades with the ongoing shift from text/broadcast-based to digital messaging and social media. Both health theories and practices are examined as it applies to testing, tracking, hoarding, therapeutics, and vaccines with case studies. Challenges to communicate about health to diverse audiences (including the science illiterate) and across (both Western and developing economies) have been complicated by politics, norms and mores, personal heuristics, and biases, such as mortality salience, news avoidance, and quarantine fatigue. Issues of economic development and land use, trade and transportation, and even climate change have increased the exposure of human populations to infectious diseases making risk and resilience more pressing. The book has been designed to support health communicators and public health management professionals, students, and interested stakeholders and university libraries.

Although global pandemics are not a new phenomenon, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken place in a very different information environment than any pandemic before it. In today’s world, information plays a critical role in all areas of life with much of this information being delivered over the internet and social media. People have access to unprecedented amounts of information from both official and unofficial sources. While these channels are beneficial for enabling authorities to obtain information necessary to manage the pandemic, there is also a higher risk of misinformation spread. Mass Communications and the Influence of Information During Times of Crises provides a comprehensive overview of research conducted into the role of information and the media during times of international crises, particularly examining the COVID-19 pandemic. This text provides a better understanding of how to use the media as a tool for managing pandemics in the event of future global health crises. Covering topics such as crisis communication, data acquisition, and social media usage, this book is a dynamic resource for government policymakers, public health authorities, information and communications specialists, researchers, graduate and post-graduate students, professors, and academicians in a wide range of both public health and information-related disciplines.

This book details how the processes of communication are affected by the presence of a pandemic and establishes a research agenda for those effects across the broad field of communication studies. Through contributions from experts in communication subdisciplines such as crisis, organizational, interpersonal, health, intergroup, and intercultural, this book provides the reader with a comprehensive view of the emerging field of study "pandemic communication." Each chapter has four primary objectives to: (1) define critical issues for pandemic communication from its subdiscipline’s perspective, (2) examine how communication varies during pandemic(s), (3) provide examples of how pandemic(s) havefor affected communication, and (4) propose a research agenda to build pandemic communication theory. This book is suited to undergraduate or post-graduate courses or modules in communication studies across a variety of subdisciplines as well as a reference for researchers in the subject.

This edited volume makes a unique and timely contribution by exploring in depth the topic of strategic communication and COVID-19 from a global perspective. It is widely agreed that effective and timely communication and leadership are crucial to the successful management of any pandemic. With the ongoing and possibly long-lasting impact COVID-19 has had on many aspects of communication and multiple sectors of our societies, it is critical to explore the role of strategic communication in change management during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. This book addresses such a need and is thoroughly grounded in rich empirical evidence gained through a global study of COVID-19 communication experiences and strategies. In the second half of 2020, a transnational team of senior researchers conducted research to investigate COVID-19 communications (COM-COVID-19) in different countries, representing Europe, Africa, Latin America, North America, South America, and Asia. The results presented in this book provide a compelling, current picture of the COVID-19 pandemic and strategic communication globally. Chapters individually explore the national and regional experiences and discuss relevant successes and failures of pandemic communication and specific learning from the 2020–2021 crises. By emphasising the discussion on key communication channels, sources of information, facts and concerns as related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the editors call for actions to develop effective strategies within unique national contexts, which can shed light on global expectations on necessary public health responses and communication. This book is written for scholars, educators and professionals in communication, public relations, strategic communication and corporate communication. It is also appropriate to use this book as a supplementary text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on relevant courses.

Learn more about how people communicate during crises with this insightful collection of resources In Communicating Science in Times of Crisis: COVID-19 Pandemic, distinguished academics and editors H. Dan O’Hair and Mary John O’Hair have delivered an insightful collection of resources designed to shed light on the implications of attempting to communicate science to the public in times of crisis. Using the recent and ongoing coronavirus outbreak as a case study, the authors explain how to balance scientific findings with social and cultural issues, the ability of media to facilitate science and mitigate the impact of adverse events, and the ethical repercussions of communication during unpredictable, ongoing events. The first volume in a set of two, Communicating Science in Times of Crisis: COVID-19 Pandemic isolates a particular issue or concern in each chapter and exposes the difficult choices and processes facing communicators in times of crisis or upheaval. The book connects scientific issues with public policy and creates a coherent fabric across several communication studies and disciplines. The subjects addressed include: A detailed background discussion of historical medical crises and how they were handled by the scientific and political communities of the time Cognitive and emotional responses to communications during a crisis Social media communication during a crisis, and the use of social media by authority figures during crises Communications about health care-related subjects Data strategies undertaken by people in authority during the coronavirus crisis Perfect for communication scholars and researchers who focus on media and communication, Communicating Science in Times of Crisis: COVID-19 Pandemic also has a place on the bookshelves of those who specialize in particular aspects of the contexts raised in each of the chapters: social media communication, public policy, and health care.

This timely volume offers an international and cross-disciplinary examination of risk and crisis communication theory and practice in Europe. Placing the rapidly developing field of risk and crisis communication within the context of a Europe in flux – experiencing the amplification of the refugee crisis, Brexit, increasing terrorist attacks, a heightened awareness of the climate crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic – a cross-continental team of experts explore these developments from a theoretical and practical standpoint. Drawing connections between culture, digital technology, identity, public health, politics, and industry, the analysis offers a multitude of perspectives from across the continent and provides ways ahead for the field of risk and crisis communication. This exciting and innovative volume will interest scholars and students of risk and crisis communication, media studies, political communication, public relations, political studies, and international relations. Chapter 5 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license