EMBODIED RISK COMMUNICATION IN THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ENVIRONMENT

ABSTRACT

The troubling era of COVID-19 has highlighted that various audiences align with media sources that support and confirm their own beliefs, oftentimes to the detriment of fact-based reasoning. To counter the lack of reliable news sources in a critical time such as a global pandemic, we offer the Anticipatory Model of Crisis Management’s (AMCM’s) five major components and how crisis teams and practitioners can apply this model to inherent risks as well as the many audiences that are stakeholders. After we discuss the AMCM in depth, we show the crucial role that technology plays during a state of crisis, especially pertaining to community-based crisis communication centers;as such, we explore the embodiment of media and self-salient behavior that media platforms can often facilitate. The final third of our chapter discusses the actions that technical communicators should take in order to minimize “alternative facts” and maximize the dissemination of science-based facts. Learning objectives for this chapter are to (1) familiarize our readers with AMCM and how to apply it to their own ends;(2) recognize how media can manipulate intended messages for their own agendas;and (3) explore best practices for the technical communicator during a time of crisis. © 2022 Taylor and Francis.