Implications of the UK government’s delayed early warning Covid-19 Crisis Communications and its potential Obfuscation and Boomerang effects on the public.
Introduction
Health Crisis communication has an impact on how the public effectively respond to adopting disease prevention and control measures campaigns. Health Crisis communication has an impact on how the public effectively respond to adopting disease prevention and control measures campaigns. The government, when making such communication should ensure it reaches as many people as possible and it is done on a timely fashion. All media audiences should be targeted in order to make the communication more effective. With the changing technologies in communication, there are a number of communication platforms that need to be taken into consideration when making health crisis communication. Therefore, viewing the first most crucial two weeks of the Covid-19 global pandemic from a Public Relations perspective, this paper aims to critically analyse how the UK government’s first press communiqué on coronavirus impacted its media audience as stakeholders. Furthermore suggesting that ‘Audiences’ `attention for the press and broadcasting is declining, turning toward a fast-changing array of online and social media service’ Livingstone (2019 p171) therefore, it was imperative that Johnson should’ve have included Twitter in the formation of the crisis communication.
Methods
Using 'Unintended outcomes - Evaluation of Health Communications’ campaigns by Cho and Salmon as a framework of key audience theories relevant to this topic, I analysed COVID-19-related text from December 2019 to March 2020 as follows:
- The Prime Minister’s first ‘address to the nation on coronavirus: 10 May 2020: transcript of the speech, exactly as it was delivered' UK.gov (2020)
- Unbiased media outlet commentary that followed thereafter. In particular, contextualising excerpts from BBC television and The Guardian newspaper opinion editorials
- Semiotic manifest content analysis of [1]Twitter ‘citizen audiences’ as a sample of the public opinion.
- To a lesser extent, interrogate the sentiments by PR professionals
Key Audience theories and concepts relevant to Health Crisis Communication
This study seeks to discuss the context of unintentional outcomes, that came out of the Covid-19 crisis communication response or lack thereof, that nearly cost the United Kingdom a majority of its population, when the Prime Minister Johnson contemplated a ‘herd immunity’ as a strategy to combat the pandemic. With this view in mind, contextualise within
‘the notion of the active audience [being] central to understanding the nature of oppositional and community uses of media, and particularly the relationship between media activists […] and the audiences that they serve’ Harrison and Bartel (2011 p158).
Moreover, delving deeper into the Twitter audience sentiments, as Marwick and Boyd quoted in their Twitter users audience research, ‘in today’s media-saturated landscape, politicians and celebrities use ‘polysemy’ or coded communication to simultaneously appeal to different, even oppositional audiences (Albertson, 2006; Fiske, 1989), therefore, this section of the paper discusses how the ‘herd immunity’ narrative panned out on Twitter. Thus, critically examine assumptions underlying media audiences as passive and or imagined stakeholders; and argue that based on their reaction to the lack of clarity and clear leadership messaging on Covid-19, they were hardly passive nor imagined. Furthermore, ignoring the influence of this audience - may have led to an [2]Obfuscation and [3]Boomerang effects of the Covid-19 initial messaging - which ultimately, led to the unprecedented high number of corona virus fatalities in the UK.
This lack of vigilance, in comparison to Hicks et al in the ‘Growth of Health Communication: A Story of Consumer Empowerment’ that established how in the 21st Century, governments (as global health crisis communicators) must be vigilant and judicious in selecting their sources when gathering facts, by investigating and recognising that their reports (especially with social media empowering the audience), there is need for the government agencies to urgently adopt ‘New Media, New Methods, New Message’ Hicks, (2016) of crisis communication than the otherwise old bureaucratic methods that could cause more harm. In respect to Covid-19 communications, on Twitter, ‘a transformative picture emerged of an active audience, an interpretative audience, far from simply subject to the causal influences of powerful others’ Livingstone (2019, p173) as the conversation heated up, far from what traditional broadcasting wields.
Equally, social media audiences were at the forefront when Spaniards and Italians began playing music or clapping for frontline workers through their balconies as a sign of solidarity with the governments’ messaging on social distancing. Their social media sharing actions amplified the message which saw the numbers of new infections plateau very quickly, a phenomenon that further points to the significance of social media communication in the modern times.
Meantime, the lack of ‘citizen audience’ engagement from the UK government, saw a peak in UK Covid-19 infections, exponentially faster than any other European country in the same period because the government failed to ensure they did not put out messages with potential ‘unintended outcomes’, which according to Cho and Salmon’s work, in this case, the delayed reaction from the PM caused an undesirable unintended effect on the British public’s attitude towards the virus. The PM did not control the narrative of ‘herd immunity’ that circulated on twitter. As a result, the public carried on their ‘life as usual’ behaviour and this led to an increase in the spread of the virus.
Moreover, this paper echoes sentiments from Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, on the idea that ‘awareness and attentiveness have implications for the acceptance and adoption of disease prevention and control measures.’ Zhu et al (2020). Therefore, while Wuhan came to its first news of an unnamed virus affecting people’s respiratory functions in December 2019, the UK was distracted by the Brexit elections.
Picking up some common nuggets that followed thereafter, from the PR industry and the media in general, here are some of most striking editorial opinions, quotes and observations the industry made before or in the wake of the crisis. Albeit, some of it a little too late, as they say; in hindsight vision is always 20/20. In his article ‘Implications Of Coronavirus: How To Communicate In Turbulent Times, Kronick wrote,
It’s a challenging time for broader society, which means it's a challenging time for marketers and communicators. [..] First, it’s crucial that communicators make sure they are dealing with accurate information. Times of crisis can be confusing and frightening, resulting in an amplification of speculation, conspiracy theories, obfuscation and censorship. Communicators must ensure that they are dealing with facts and not fiction, real information and not fake news. Kronick (25 Mar 2020)
Had the UK government taken time to review the big data from other governments who had already experienced the pandemic first-hand and devised strategies on how to react and roll out information to its citizen audience, Johnson could have perhaps avoided most pitfalls that he landed into. ‘Such big data usage is not too complex and difficult to implement, but has become possible due to high-powered computation and new analytical techniques, Kitchin (2014, p2), brings to bear the positive aspect of using ‘datafication precisely by recognizing rather than erasing audiences’ relation to both the everyday lifeworld and the public world of citizen action, regulatory intervention, and the wider society.’ Livingstone (2019), that social media audience sentiment data would’ve been a valuable lifeline.
An example, of how important big data is ‘Comms In Coronavirus: What The Data Says’ was a critical aspect in the response points out that ‘data suggests local coverage has been a core part of the way people receive information during the coronavirus pandemic, as so much of it is happening on a local level.’ NewsHip (27 March 2020).
Furthermore, datafication theories suggest that television and new media are not exclusive to holders of power, the two must be used in tandem to communicate important message, therefore, in this context, the UK government mishandled Covid-19 crisis communications, by assuming their slow action meant reducing the ‘burden on audiences.’ More works by Cho and Salmon’s establishes that the rhythm missed during the first two weeks of UK Covid-19 crisis communications ‘[..] suggests that unintended effects can manifest in multiple dimensions, including those of time lapse, levels of analysis, audience types, content specificity, and valence’ (p293), to this end, while it is fair to say, perhaps the PM was ill-advised on getting the timing and content of the first press conference right the first time.
Especially, with the novelty of a 21st century pandemic, with the pace of social media influence where the audience are so empowered - the government clearly failed to ‘observe that unlike interpersonal settings, in many mass communication contexts, the feedback from the receiver is frequently delayed or not readily feasible, allowing limited opportunities to discern and detect audience reactions’ (p294), hence missing the relevance of controlling the narrative for social media audiences. Instead of procrastinating with draconian press conferences, the UK government could’ve utilised the power of social media by pro-actively utilising it to convey ‘stay home’ messages, perhaps successfully prevented what’s now the [4]largest casualties of Covid-19 in Europe. BBC reported this about the delay:
On Friday 13th, Sir Patrick suggested managing the spread of the disease so that the population gains some immunity to the disease was a part of the government strategy. This idea, known as "herd immunity", means at-risk individuals are protected from infection because they are surrounded by people who are resistant to the disease. Rough estimates indicate that herd immunity to Covid-19 would be reached when approximately 60% of the population has had the disease. BBC.co.uk (2020)
Source: (BBC.co.uk, 2020)
Figure 1
Media audiences and analysis
Moreover, with a 2.7m number of followers on Twitter, the PM could’ve used the platform to break the negative news cycle with an ‘authentic human connection’ with the public as opposed to ‘government speak’ on national television which created a disconnect between him and ‘the twitter publics’ a vital audience in the digital era of communications. Marwick and Boyd (2011 p127), states ‘this technique resembles the polysemic and coded communicative strategies of image-management experts’ perhaps would’ve helped Johnson’s case. By the same token, it could be argued that, he did well to avoid Twitter because;
‘unlike broadcast television, social media users are not professional image-makers, and rather than giving a speech on television, they are often corresponding with friends and family. [however] by necessity, Twitter users maintain impressions by balancing personal/public information, avoiding certain topics, and maintaining authenticity’ (2011, p124)
The UK first Covid-19 press briefing on 23 March, left the nation completely baffled, confused and in surprise. Already in ‘self-isolation’ mode, the UK’s economy and its people were set to take on yet a bigger test. This vague statement made the communication even more unclear;
The number of coronavirus cases around the world is rising every day - and the UK is no exception. There now seems little doubt that it will present a significant challenge for our country. But we are well prepared, and the government and the NHS will stop at nothing to fight this virus." Johnson, (2020)
The above narrative fell short of statistics and figures, and a strong call-to-action message that was imperative to avoid a boomerang effect. It makes it difficult for the people to visualize the magnitude of the situation and hence cannot take the right actions. Moreover, the growth of social media has further fuelled outlets of health communications where the statistics and the correspondence effects can be reported. Despite this, governments have been slow in adopting social media.
A Statista April 2020 [5]report shows that world leaders effectively use twitter to engage with their nations. As such the PM missed many opportunities to engage the public (some pertinent examples of the 21st Century publics media uses) described such as follows: ‘Google box a Channel 4 TV show dubbed ‘Britain's sharpest armchair critics share more of their sharp, insightful, passionate and sometimes emotional critiques of the week's biggest and best shows on television’ whose ‘first episode date: 7 March 2013’ just in time for the critics to have a great nub at the unravelling situation surrounding Covid-19. However, this goes to show that ‘the popularity of Web 2.0 applications demonstrates that, regardless of their levels of technical expertise, users can wield technologies in more active ways than had been apparent previously to traditional media producers and technology innovatorsn (Harrison and Bartel, 2011, p157). The idea epitomised by Google box as
‘the concept of an active audience [being] integral to Downing’s (2001) historical work on radical media, for radical media products are those created by individuals that use media outside of traditional commercial media enterprises to produce and distribute oppositional messages. (p164)
The ‘citizen audience’ uses Twitter
to galvanise the public on the coronavirus topic with trending hashtags like
#COVID19UK, and #Googlebox to share their sentiments directly with their
protagonists, in this case the Prime Minister by engaging with his twitter
handle @BorisJohnson. Below Figure 2 are some of the twitter audience threads
captured, still trending 8 weeks after the fateful press conference.
Figure 2 Twitter audience sentiments
Figure 3
Results
It becomes clear in this analysis that ‘audiences’ have created media content on a long-term and consistent historical basis for purposes related largely to political and community communication (Harrison and Bartel, 2011 p 158). Information on COVID-19 was limited prior to the UK government’s first press conference acknowledging that it was a pandemic worth their proactive attention. Prior to this date, an increased amount of speculation and misinformation circulated on social media assuming the government was going to announce ‘herd’ immunity. Particularly, this divided the nation into partisan conversations and general mistrust of the central UK government. By this time 32k lives had been lost, in the preceding and latest press conference, a more contrite and sombre Johnson addressed the nation with an extension to the lockdown and yet another unclear message about a phased ‘coming out plan’ below screenshots, capture the audience sentiments on 5 May; 7 weeks after the first press conference:
Conclusion
The press conference’s missteps is a typical example of crisis communication that breeds unintended outcomes and causes publics’ mistrust especially for failing to take lessons in the wake of what happened to Spain, which introduced a strict lockdown on 14 March, (10 days earlier than the UK) when in a similar situation ‘represents missed opportunities to engage citizens earlier in the outbreak. Notwithstanding that, ‘Governments should more proactively communicate early warnings to the public in a transparent manner.’ Zhu et al (2020b).
The events that have since gripped Britain, especially in the last 8 weeks of the Covid-19 crisis is a stark warning perhaps that serves as a reminder to everyone practising crisis communication that, while what whatever transpired at No.10 Downing Street on the day of the PM’s first press communiqué - followed by a twitter storm can never be corelated (without efficacy) to a cause-and-effect, it, however, is the ‘early warning’ missteps brought to bear in this paper that best illustrates how in this case, crisis communication experts must learn their most valuable lessons.
In the end, ‘unintended effects were manifest in multiple dimensions’ with the UK fatality [6]figures summing up the mishandling of the situation during the very crucial first weeks of the Covid-19 outbreak. From a health crisis communications point of view, no doubt it had Obfuscation and Boomerang effects on the public - its intended target audience.
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[1] Twitter in particular. Due to the scope of this study I only focused on one platform.
[2] Confusion and misunderstanding of health risk and risk prevention methods
[3] The reaction by an audience that is opposite to the intended response of persuasion message
[4] As of May 17th of writing this paper statistics stood a highest in Europe.
[5] See Figure 2 on results page
[6] 34,796 had died from Corona virus as of 18th May 2020
