Selkokielellä kriisiä rakentamassa: koronadiskurssit selkomediassa ja tukijärjestöjen viestinnässä

Abstract

In this article, we consider a fundamental but so far little-investigated area of crisis communication: Easy Language journalism and public communication. Specifically, we focus on Easy Finnish material related to the Covid-19 pandemic. By adopting a Discourse Analytic perspective, we look at the ways in which the pandemic is constructed as a crisis across genres and ideological discourses operating in the overall ecology of Finnish Easy Language mass communication. As a result, we identify and describe four discourses that are foregrounded in our data: responsibility discourse, equality discourse, trust discourse and coping discourse. Our results highlight the importance of Easy Language communication in supporting the social inclusion of its target groups during a time of global crisis further severed by the so-called infodemic. The data covers the years 2020 and 2021 and includes material from the media and third-sector organizations.