Individualism, economic development, and democracy as determinants of COVID-19 risk information on 132 government websites.

Little is known about how governments transparently communicate about COVID-19. This study conducted a content analysis of 132 government COVID-19 websites to identify the salience of health messages (i.e., perceived threat, perceived efficacy, and perceived resilience) and cross-national determinants of information provision. Multinomial logistic regression was used to estimate the relationship between country-level predictors (i.e., economic development, democracy scores, and individualism index) and information salience. The numbers of deaths, discharged patients, and daily new cases were prevalent on the main webpages. Subpages provided information about vulnerability statistics, government responses, and vaccination rates. Less than 10% of governments included messages that may instill self-efficacy. Democratic countries had higher chances of providing threat statistics on subpages, including daily new cases (Relative Risk Ratio, RRR = 1.66, 95% CI: 1.16-2.37), mortalities (RRR = 1.69, 95% CI: 1.23-2.33), hospitalizations (RRR = 1.63, 95% CI: 1.12-2.37), and positivity rates (RRR = 1.55, 95% CI: 1.07-2.23). On subpages, democratic governments emphasized information about perceived vulnerability (RRR = 2.36, 95% CI: 1.50-3.73), perceived response efficacy (RRR = 1.48, 95% CI: 1.06-2.06), recovery numbers (RRR = 1.84, 95% CI: 1.31-2.60), and vaccinations (RRR = 2.14, 95% CI: 1.39-3.30). Developed countries reported the number of daily new cases, perceived response efficacy, and vaccination rates on their COVID-19 main pages. Individualism scores predicted the salience of vaccination rates on main pages and the omission of information related to perceived severity and perceived vulnerability. Democracy levels were more predictive of reporting information about perceived severity, perceived response efficacy, and perceived resilience on subpages of dedicated websites. Improving public health agencies' communication about COVID-19 is warranted.

Politicization of Science in COVID-19 Vaccine Communication: Comparing US Politicians, Medical Experts, and Government Agencies

We compare the social media discourses on COVID-19 vaccines constructed by U.S. politicians, medical experts, and government agencies, and investigate how various contextual factors influence the likelihood of government agencies politicizing the issue. Taking the political corpus and the medical corpus as two extremes, we propose a language-based definition of politicization of science and measure it on a continuous scale. By building a machine learning classifier that captures subtle linguistic indicators of politicization and applying it to two years of government agencies' Facebook posting history, we demonstrate that: 1) U.S. politicians heavily politicized COVID-19 vaccines, medical experts conveyed minimal politicization, and government agencies' discourse was a mix of the two, yet more closely resembled medical experts;' 2) increasing COVID-19 infection rates reduced government agencies' politicization tendencies;3) government agencies in Democratic-leaning states were more likely to politicize COVID-19 vaccines than those in Republican-leaning states;and 4) the degree of politicization did not significantly differ across agencies' jurisdiction levels. We discuss the conceptualization of politicization of science, the incumbency effect, and government communication as an emerging area for political communication research. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Political Communication is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Speech acts in appeals for social distancing and public compliance intentions during The Covid-19 pandemic in Indonesia

Government‘s communication messages are critical in resolving health problems such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The decision of linguistic speech acts also influences the behavior of obedient and disciplined individuals. Gender, age, and race are all predictors of social distancing compliance (Pedersen & Favero, 2020). However, only few studies have been conducted to examine the form of speech acts that can control public conduct in accordance with social distancing on each of these social variables. This study examined the intention of public compliance through the pragmatic interpretation of the government's appeal for social distancing. The study was conducted with a cross-sectional design survey involving 1339 respondents through online data collection. The findings reveal that different speech acts have varying effects on people's intentions to follow the health protocol appeal. This study is expected to make a theoretical contribution by demonstrating that gender, age, and education level influence the perlocutionary style of speech actions in critical health communication. The findings is expected to aid the government to develop effective messages on health risk reduction behavior through the selection of appropriate speech acts in the future © 2023,Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics.All Rights Reserved.

The Ecuadorian Government's 9/100 Vaccination Plan: A Comparative Analysis of Social Media Use

The aim of this article is to identify how the Ecuadorian Government's has managed the communication on social media of vaccination campaign 9/100, released after the COVID-19 pandemic. After reviewing the main theories related govern-ment communications and risk management in the context of public health, the activity in social media of the Communications Office of the Government from May 24 to September 1 of 2021 is studied. Therefore, to begin, it has been applied the PRGS model (Presence, Response, Generation and Suggestion) to measure the activity and response received on social media. Then, the content of the posts has been reviewed, through the analysis of the messages given on the posts from the point of view of its frame, presentation, and purpose. The findings reveal that the vaccination campaign was the main theme on social media and that the messages published were part of a proper risk communications strategy. Nonetheless, there were found certain deficiencies regarding risk managing in the context of public health.

Education in Government Communications: Case of Ukraine

The article highlights building prerequisites that help to tackle problems related to the insufficient government communications and poor information provided to potential audiences in participatory democracies. The analysis has shown that many counties face the lack of strategic communications (both horizontal and vertical) and thus, create concerns about misunderstanding and bottlenecks in design and implementation of public policies. This problem expands when countries undergo rapid, systemic, fundamental changes, in particular due to the energy transition. Ukraine is not an exemption. Lack of real competition between MPA programs, pre-service and in-service training programs for public servants in Ukraine and poor quality of programs leave a niche for educational institutions to take the leading position. Hence, Kyiv Mohyla School of Governance (hereinafter - KMSGov) launched very specific and need oriented MPA program in Government Communications. The program was designed in close cooperation with Ukrainian public authorities and become client oriented. The program is innovative and one of a kind due to its integrity and consistency. It is student-centered and widely uses case studies, simulations and PBL techniques. In addition, the program consists of logically interconnected courses, which complement each other and provide broad pattern of particularities of evidence-based public policy design and implementation, public administration and management theory and practice, modern features of government communications and policy advocacy. Due to COVID restrictions and worldwide lockdown the Government Communication MPA program provided by KMSGov was fully transferred into on-line format without losing its quality. It became possible due modern information and communication technologies (tested in February-July 2020). The paper provides brief overview and main results of the analysis of the existing MPA programs and key particularities of the newly launched program. © The Authors, published by EDP Sciences. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Influence of government communication on risk perception. An analysis based on the context of the sixth wave of Covid-19 in Madrid

Risk theorists have frequently discussed the discursive construction of risk perception. In particular, the effect of media consumption on increasing the subjective perception of risk has been highlighted. Not much is known about how government communication affects citizens' impressions and attitudes in this area, something that this research seeks to address. During the sixth wave of Covid-19, triggered by the emergence of the Omicron variant, government discourse shifted from initial concern to what has become known as the "influenzaisation” paradigm, an attempt to normalise the disease. Based on the results of a survey carried out in January 2022 amongst 664 citizens of the Community of Madrid, we sought to demonstrate, using binary logistic regression (BLR) models, to what extent the degree to which the citizens of Madrid internalised the government's thesis of "influenzaisation” was related to a lower perception of risk. Similarly, the aim is to show whether agreement with the "influenzaisation” thesis also favoured positions that were less inclined to restrictions, so that government communication succeeded in reducing the social demand for measures. Finally, the study evaluates the predictive character of ideology on levels of risk perception and attitudes towards restrictive mea-sures. The findings indicate that acceptance of the "influenzaisation” story led to a lower perception of risk and, as a con-sequence, reduced support for restrictive measures among those most exposed to this thesis. The discursive articulation of risk in government communication becomes a central element of crisis management and the strategic formulation of "risk de-escalation” or "post-risk” messages. © 2022, El Profesional de la Informacion. All rights reserved.

Discursive Strategies of Blaming: The Language of Judgment and Political Protest Online.

Modern politics is permeated by blame games-symbolic struggles over the blameworthiness or otherwise of various social actors. In this article, we develop a framework for identifying different strategies of blaming that protesters use on social media to criticize and delegitimize governments and political leaders. We draw on the systemic functional linguistic theory of Appraisal to distinguish between blame attributions based on negative judgments of the target's (1) capacity, such as references to their incompetence and policy failures; (2) veracity, questioning their truthfulness or honesty via references to deceitful character or dishonest acts and utterances; (3) propriety, questioning their moral standing by references to, for instance, corruption; and (4) tenacity, suggesting that the politicians are not dependable due to, for example, dithering. We add to this a further threefold distinction based on whether blaming is focused on the target's (1) bad character, (2) bad behavior, or (3) negative outcomes that the target either caused or did not prevent from happening. To illustrate the approach, we analyze a corpus of replies by Twitter users to tweets by British government ministers about two highly contentious issues, Covid-19 and Brexit, in 2020-2021. We suggest that the methodology outlined here could provide a useful avenue for systematically revealing and comparing a variety of realizations of blaming in large datasets of online conflict talk, thereby providing a more fine-grained understanding of the practices of protest and delegitimation in modern politics.

How 'cocooning' as a public health measure was reported during the Covid-19 crisis

This paper explores the nature of newspaper coverage of 'cocooning' as a public health measure at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in Ireland in 2020. The study, which focuses on coverage in The Irish Times, shows that the number of human-interest-framed articles on cocooning was approximately four times greater than the number of informative ones. This suggests that the proportion of human-interest and emotive stories diluted the volume of informative articles. The findings also point to an absence of significant official voices in the coverage of cocooning, such as key ministerial figures, which may have contributed to knowledge gaps. There was also a discernible gender bias, not just in experts quoted but also in the journalists who wrote news and feature articles. The study offers important lessons for government communication strategies in how important public information is provided to target groups.

Government communication in times of crisis: The priorities and trends in South Africa’s response to COVID-19

The effectiveness of a government’s communication, especially in times of crisis, is crucial to its legitimacy, reputation, disaster management and its ability to ensure the wellbeing of its people. This paper examines the focus and trends in press statements published on South Africa’s official coronavirus website during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Government decisions, successes and challenges were frequently communicated to the public through these statements. The study aimed to understand what was communicated regarding government’s priorities and the factors that shaped them. Data were extracted from 483 press statements published between 05 March 2020 and 15 January 2021. Thematic analysis and mean scores were used to identify the focus and trends in the messages, while the Wilcoxon signed rank test (WSRT) was used to identify the significance of the changes in the mean scores. The results showed a coordinated and persistent effort to inform the public with credible, accurate, timely and empowering information. The most persistent priority of the government was to control the spread of the virus, while several issues relating to the socio-economic wellbeing of the people were prioritised at different stages of the pandemic. There was a parallel movement between the trajectory of the disease and government decisions, suggesting that government response was mostly reactive to the behaviour of the pandemic. The South African government needs to be more proactive in its disaster response and demonstrate a nuanced understanding of its citizens and their challenges.

Analysis the Success of Government Twitter Use in Increasing Vaccine Participation (Case Study of Surabaya City Government, Indonesia)

This study aims to find out how social media provides information related to COVID-19 Vaccination, especially the dissemination of Vaccination information in the City of Surabaya through the Twitter account @CommandSurabaya;this account is a social media that is quite active in providing vaccination information. In today's digital era, governments, like individuals, use social media to interact with the public virtually to increase participation and accountability. Social media users have changed their behavior in the context of personal and group communication, as well as government and political communication. The government requires In the Covid-19 situation, social media is very important for communication between the government and the general public in Indonesia. Social media has the following characteristics: intense, massive, interactive, and fast. The research method combines qualitative analysis with secondary data collected from the Twitter social site @CommandSurabaya as well as official government news. To visualize the data analysis, Nvivo12 plus software was used, specifically the Twitter Sociogram data collection tool. Based on these findings, the Twitter account @Commandsurabaya is more active in providing information about vaccinations in the city of Surabaya. Cities use Twitter to communicate with the public. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Citizen digital participation in Peru and Ecuador during the government crisis management by COVID-19

The response of the audiences/citizens in the social network Facebook of the Ministries of Health of Ecuador and Peru is analyzed in relation to the content published on the COVID-19 pandemic during the first wave of each country, in order to identify their role in decoding government discourse. With a qualitative approach, a case study is applied through the observation of eight categories and the analysis of metrics provided by the Fanpage Karma digital application. As main results, two apparently homogeneous realities stand out and characterized by discursive coherence and reading comprehension in the comments, a predominance of emotion over reason as a frame and an absent addition of information. However, relevant data can be found that point to two different societies regarding the possibilities of dialogue with their governments: one with greater acquiescence and interaction;the other, without large spaces for debate on digital participation. © 2022, J. Tropical Biodiversity Biotechnology (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Saudi Ministries Twitter communication strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic: A qualitative content analysis study.

Objectives: To understand government communication strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic by examining topics related to COVID-19 posted by Saudi governmental ministries on Twitter and situating our findings within existing health behavior theoretical frameworks. Study design: Retrospective content analysis of COVID-19 related tweets. Methods: On November 7th, 2020, we extracted relevant tweets posted by five Saudi governmental ministries. After we extracted the data, we developed and applied a coding schema. Results: A total of 3,950 tweets were included in our dataset. Topics fell into two groups: disease-related (49.2%) and non-disease related (50.8%). The disease-related group included seven categories: awareness (18.5%), symptom (0.6%), prevention (7.7%), disease transmission (1.9%), treatment (0.3%), testing (3.4%), and reports (16.7%). The non-disease related group included eight categories: lockdown (5.9%), online learning (12.8%), digital platforms (4.3%), empowerment (12.0%), accountability (1.1%), non-disease reports (2.1%), local and international news (10.8%), and general statements (1.9%). Based on the correlation analysis, we found that the top positively correlated categories were: "testing" and "digital platforms" (r = 0.4157), "awareness" and "prevention" (r = 0.3088), "prevention" and "disease transmission" (r = 0.3025), "awareness" and "disease transmission" (r = 0.1685), "symptom" and "testing" (r = 0.1081), "awareness" and "symptom" (r = 0.0812), "symptom" and "digital platforms" (r = 0.0645), and "disease transmission" and "digital platforms" (r = 0.0450), p-values < 0.01. Several health behavior theoretical constructs were linked to our findings. Conclusions: Integrating behavioral theories in the development of health risk communication should be taken seriously by government communication specialists who manage social media accounts, as these theories help underlining determinants of people's behaviors.

Do government activities increase public compliance in the Covid-19 pandemic? Evidence from Vietnam

Purpose: During the COVID-19 pandemic, it has raised an important question of whether government efforts (GEFs), especially communication work, could prevent the outbreak of this pandemic by enhancing public trust and public compliance with the government. This research answers this question by focusing on the case of Vietnam, a low-resource country that gained some achievements during the first pandemic year 2020. In particular, this study aims to investigate the relationship between GEF, public trust and public compliance during the country’s first nationwide social distancing. Design/methodology/approach: The structural equation modelling is used to analyse data collected from 467 respondents in Vietnam during the nationwide social distancing in 2020. Findings: Perceived GEF is positively associated with public compliance with the government directly and indirectly through the mediating role of public trust in government (PTG). The empirical results also reveal the effectiveness of government communication work, one among the government’s great efforts, during the COVID-19 pandemic, in terms of intensity and diversity in communication and information channels. Practical implications: During a pandemic, the governments must enhance public compliance with public health measures to implement the anti-epidemic missions effectively. Therefore, it is important to raise public perception of GEF and PTG. The study’s findings highlight that governments in developing countries should implement relevant responses and policies for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and future public health crises, especially in the context that effective vaccines are unavailable or insufficient. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is among the first attempts that examine the role of GEF, especially public health communication work, in raising public compliance directly and indirectly through the mediating role of public trust. The study carries some important messages for containing a public health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Government Communication, Perceptions of COVID-19, and Vaccination Intention: A Multi-Group Comparison in China.

Government communication has been playing an important role in mass vaccination to conduct the largest vaccination campaign of the world for COVID-19 and to counter vaccine hesitancy. This study employs the health belief model to examine the association between government communication and the COVID-19 vaccination intention. A survey of Chinese adults (N = 557) was conducted in March 2021, and partial least squares structural equation modeling was employed to estimate the multi-construct relationships. The findings indicate that government communication has both direct positive association with vaccination intention and indirect association with vaccination intention through the mediation of perceived severity, benefits, and barriers. Multi-group comparisons suggest that individuals from private sectors are more easily mobilized to receive COVID-19 vaccination by government communication than those from public sectors. Similarly, the correlation between government communication and the vaccination intention of individuals with a good health status was stronger than that of those with a poor health status. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are further discussed.

#Spread the info, not the virus: political communication and influencers' responses to the Legault government's call during the COVID-19 crisis in Quebec

In March 2020, Premier Legault called on Quebec influencers and celebrities as part of the #Propage l'info, pas le virus campaign to educate youth about following health guidelines against COVID-19. This article provides an insight into the different ways in which these renowned individuals responded to this call as well as the forms of their responses. To do so, the content of the videos shared by these individuals on social networks was analyzed using a qualitative coding scheme inspired by Fields (1988). The result of this analysis shows that different means were used to accentuate the feeling of closeness between the celebrity and his audience, in order to increase the adherence to the message. The use of the pronoun "On", the use of narrative formulas and the intimacy that emerges from informative videos may contribute to the rapport between a celebrity and his public.

The Relationship between Government Information Supply and Public Information Demand in the Early Stage of COVID-19 in China-An Empirical Analysis.

Accurate and effective government communication is essential for public health emergencies. To optimize the effectiveness of government crisis communication, this paper puts forward an analytical perspective of supply-demand matching based on the interaction between the government and the public. We investigate the stage characteristics and the topic evolutions of both government information supply and public information demand through combined statistical analysis, text mining, text coding and cluster analysis, using empirical data from the National Health Commission's WeChat in China. A quantitative measure reflecting the public demand for government information supply is proposed. Result indicates that the government has provided a large amount of high-intensity epidemic-related information, with six major topics being the medical team, government actions, scientific protection knowledge, epidemic situation, high-level deployment and global cooperation. The public's greatest information needs present different characteristics at different stages, with "scientific protection knowledge", "government actions" and "medical teams" being the most needed in the outbreak stage, the control stage and the stable stage, respectively. The subject of oversupply is "medical team", and the subject of short supply is "epidemic dynamics" and "science knowledge". This paper provides important theoretical and practical value for improving the effectiveness of government communication in public health crises.

The changing role and status of UK government communication during the Covid-19 crisis

It is posited that the Covid-19 crisis changed the role and status of UK government communication. With outputs from the government’s communication strategy and the Government Communication Service’s evaluation of its role and practice, the paper uses Bourdieu’s field theory to examine the changing position and status of government communicators within the political field and how this has influenced their communication practice. The findings suggest a new and enhanced role for government communicators, utilising the social capital inherent in the field. Some practitioners have moved closer to the centre of the political field because of the pandemic, with communication requirements driven by Covid-19 bringing the role of communication as a strategic management discipline to the fore. However, the increased demands for cultural capital, particularly regarding the communication of data, risk and uncertainty, together with structural changes to the field create risks to the new role and positioning of government communication in the UK. © The Author(s) 2021 Reprints and Permission: © ESSACHESS.

The Challenge of Human Psychology to Effective Management of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

When it comes to the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic and the effectiveness of measures against the disease, many citizens worldwide do not trust their governments or health authorities. This brief essay discusses several psychological mechanisms which, under certain conditions, lead people to ignore important sources of information and hinder effective management of the epidemic. The paper shows that understanding psychological mechanisms, such as information neglect, cognitive dissonance, psychological reactance, and, in general, the diversity of people's thinking styles, may help leaders design more effective government communications.

An Analysis of Government Communication in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Recommendations for Effective Government Health Risk Communication.

Governments throughout the world can learn many critical lessons from examining instances of ineffective communication with the public during the global coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Ineffective government communication has resulted in a great deal of public confusion and misunderstanding, as well as serious errors in responding to this evolving health threat, leading to disastrous health and social outcomes for the public and prolonging the pandemic, especially within the United States. This article uses systems theory as a template for analyzing government communication in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic, providing governments with recommendations for establishing effective health risk communication strategies for use with the public. The communication strategies offered here promote the delivery of relevant, accurate, and sensitive information to key public groups, minimizing communication noise to guide desirable coordinated actions. These communication strategies can be applied locally, nationally, and internationally.