Deciphering the “pandemic public sphere”: Government communication, (social) media discourses on and citizens’ responses to Covid-19 in Europe and the USA

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Emese Domahidi; Dr. Robin Janzik, since 3/2023; Professor Dr. Martin Löffelholz; Professor Dr.-Ing. Kai-Uwe Sattler; Dr. Andreas Schwarz; Professorin Dr. Nadine Steinmetz
• Subject Area: Communication Sciences ; Security and Dependability, Operating-, Communication- and Distributed Systems ; Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 458225198

This project comparatively analyzes how effectively governments and health institutions in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the USA have informed their citizens about Covid-19 and encouraged them to adopt self-protective behavior. These countries were selected according to the following criteria: Severity of the pandemic, system of government, degree of political autonomy, trust of the population in the government, type of media system, and the respective "risk culture". The project is guided by three key questions. (1) What messages and explanations about Covid-19 and related protective measures did governments and health institutions communicate to the public in the respective countries? (2) How did legacy media cover the pandemic and governmental risk messages? (3) How did the public perceive the pandemic and the respective governmental risk messages? Answering these questions requires a multidisciplinary approach, in which we combine qualitative, quantitative and computational research methods from communication science, psychology and computer science, thus methodologically extending risk and crisis communication research. We have defined four work packages (WP). WP 1 focuses on the comparative analysis of the communication of governments and health institutions on Covid-19, examining which crisis communication strategies were used due to which factors, which risk and instructional messages were developed to inform the population and the media, and how these messages changed over the course of the pandemic. WP 2 comparatively analyzes how legacy media covered both the pandemic as well as risk messages from governments and health institutions in terms of causal attributions, moral judgments, and institutional performance of government institutions, and how the framing of Covid-19 and government communication have influenced each other. WP 3 comparatively analyzes the extent to which the instructional and risk messages disseminated by governments and health institutions about Covid-19 shaped the citizens’ view of the pandemic, the extent to which the information needs of citizens were met, the extent to which media coverage influenced public perceptions, and the reactions that government communication in the social media triggered. WP 4 summarizes the results and identifies commonalities and differences in the risk and crisis communication of governments, health institutions and the media in the countries included in this study. Based on this, we will further develop (a) theoretical approaches describing the interplay between government messages, media coverage, public perception and the spread of Covid-19, (b) a strategy for real-time monitoring of crisis communication, and (c) policy recommendations for the communication of governments and health institutions on pandemics.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Spain
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Ángel Javier Castaños Martínez; Professorin Dr. María Teresa Mercado Sáez; Jingyuan Yu
• Ehemalige Antragstellerinnen / Ehemalige Antragsteller: Natalie Berger, Ph.D., from 4/2022 until 9/2022; Dr. Frederik Freudenstein, from 6/2021 until 4/2022; Dr. Severine Koch, from 9/2022 until 3/2023