“A Tale of Two Hospitals”: The Role of Place-Based Sensemaking in COVID-19 Communication for Rural and Urban Texas Hospitals

Abstract

Rural and urban hospitals must respond differently to crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, given their unique situations. In this study, we performed a rhetorical analysis of press releases from rural and urban hospitals in Texas to better understand the crisis communication strategies of the two hospital systems. Following previous literature on narrative sensemaking, place-based storytelling, and pre-crisis management, we found that the examined press releases used setting details to ground their health-related information in their specific communities. Such a strategy made the information accessible and attainable, but potentially reinforced place-based tensions and inequalities. Our study has implications for preventative sensemaking research as well as for crisis communicators attempting to better reach specific communities during a long-term, developing crisis.

Effective communication management in a public health crisis: lessons learned about COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of health communication executives

“…Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], World Health Organization [WHO]) (Nowak and Greenwell, 2021; Offerdal et al ., 2021) and healthcare industry in the private sector (e.g. pharmaceutical companies and hospitals) (Hayes et al ., 2021; Mazzei et al ., 2021), as well as from organizations outside the healthcare arena (Stranzl et al ., 2021). In the domain of communication management, scholars have analyzed COVID-19 crisis communication by looking at internal organization emails (Heide and Simonsson, 2021; Yeomans and Bowman, 2021), employee perceptions of COVID-19 internal communication (Ecklebe and Löffler, 2021; Einwiller et al ., 2021) and the lived experience of the COVID-19 pandemic on health communication executives' own experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic (Gregory et al ., 2021).…”