Risk Communication and COVID-19

Risk Communication and COVID-19 explores the 'risk communication' responses by national governments to the outbreak and global spread of the COVID-19 strain of coronavirus.

Ioana A. Coman is Associate Professor at Texas Tech University, USA. She is a passionate educator and a researcher focused on how publics understand, react to, and interact with other important actors during large-scale health risk, crisis, and other hot-button issues or contexts. Her courses focus on different aspects of risk/crisis communication, public relations, journalism, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Miloš Gregor is Assistant Professor at Masaryk University, the Czech Republic. He teaches courses on political communication and marketing, propaganda, disinformation, and fake news. Together with Petra Mlejnková, he is a mentor of projects Choose Your Info (Zvol si info) and Fakescape, both dedicated to media literacy awareness. Both projects received awards in the international Peer to Peer: Global Digital Challenge competition. Darren Lilleker is Professor of Political Communication in the Faculty of Media and Communication and Deputy Head of the Humanities and Law Department at Bournemouth University, UK. He is Convenor of the Centre for Comparative Politics and Media Research and teaches across the politics programs. He has led a range of research projects using qualitative and quantitative methods, delivered lectures, and conducted workshops to students across the world.

Introduction 1. Risk Communication During Crisis and Post-Crisis Loops: How Governments Communicated about COVID-19 and the Vaccines - Conceptual Framework 2. Ghana: Communicating State Capacity Through Humour and Strategic Absences 3. South Africa: Government Messaging During the COVID-19 Pandemic 4. Brazil: From Denialism to Cynicism 5. Mexico: Governmental Communication and Management of the Pandemic of COVID-19 - The "Vespertinas" as Communication Strategy 7. Czechia: From Chaos and Ignorance to Calm and Vaccination - Government Communication on COVID-19 8. Italy: Managing Risk and Crisis Communication in the Context of Political Instability 9. Sweden: the Quiet Consensus 10. Egypt: From Empathetic Rhetoric to Pragmatism - Addressing Healthcare Inequities in the COVID-19 Response 11. Iran: On the Front Lines and Yet Isolated - During the COVID-19 Pandemic 12. Israel: COVID-19 and Public Information 13. India: The Message, the Messenger, the Messiah - COVID-19 Communication under Modi 14. Vietnam: Dynamic Response and Communication Strategy in the COVID-19 Pandemic 15. Thailand: Inconsistency and Obscurity of Government-led Communication During the Pandemic 16. Japan: Risk Communication and COVID-19 17. China: Unraveling Crisis Communication - Assessing Strategies in the COVID-19 Pandemic 18. Aotearoa New Zealand: The World-beating Response that Lost its Lustre Conclusion: Risk Communication during COVID-19 and National and Global Lessons Learned