Connecting Crisis Communication Theory and Canadian Communication Research

Abstract

Connecting Crisis Communication Theory and Canadian Communication ResearchThe COVID-19 pandemic placed a spotlight, unlike any other crisis in recent memory, on the important and challenging public role of the crisis communicator. This work is difficult in the heat of a pandemic, with situations and information changing daily, and some crisis communicators succeeded and some failed. Effective crisis communicators of all types-politicians, corporate leaders, and doctors-warned people about the dangers of the new coronavirus, provided instructions on how to limit its damage, and published statistics of the prevalence of the virus in the community. Spreading crisis communication messages was not limited to professionals: everyone seemed to be doing crisis communication work, even ordinary social media users simply retweeting the recommendations to wash hands and wear masks. Failures in crisis communication involved slow responses and the circulation of misinformation. The four articles in this special issue on Canadian crisis communication research were written before the pandemic. Yet the authors cover topics in healthcare, communication technology, and politics that are directly relevant to the challenges of doing COVID-19 crisis communication.Early in the pandemic, the effect of COVID-19 on the Canadian healthcare system was, naturally, top of mind, and criticism circulated. In Ontario, for example, criticism of health crisis communicators fell in two categories: inconsistent public messaging by health officials and politicians about the prevalence of community transmission of the virus and the lack of information transparency during the early days of the pandemic (