The H1N1 crisis: Roles played by government communicators, the public and the media

Abstract

A B S T R A C TThe paper examines the communications that occurred between the news media, the general public and the government during the 2009 outbreak of the H1N1 influenza virus from a crisis communications perspective, focusing on events in Ontario, Canada. In crisis communications theory and practice, the analysis borrows from secondlevel agenda-setting literature, which suggests that an issue's attributes can affect the perceived level of salience among both the media and the public. The analysis combined a review of government crisis communications planning, a content analysis of radio, television and print news coverage of H1N1, and opinion polling and other data indicating the public's level of awareness and concern over H1N1. ©Journal of Professional Communication, all rights reserved."What we've got here is (a) failure to communicate."From the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke hen a health care crisis occurs, as it did in 2009 with the outbreak of the H1N1 or "swine flu" virus, it puts immediate and enormous pressure on the professional communicator. A successful public health campaign involves many important logistical functions such as coordinating health care workers and resources to vaccinate the public. Equally as important is the communications function. The communications function, defined within the narrow context of the challenge of addressing a public health care crisis, is to inform the public and health care practitioners and stakeholders on ways of mitigating the crisis, by reassuring and educating the public.The verdicts on how well Canadian public health officials handled the H1N1 crisis are in, and few of them were kind. By suggesting that the government's W

Automatically quantifying the scientific quality and sensationalism of news records mentioning pandemics: validating a maximum entropy machine-learning model

“…the likelihood (or unlikelihood) in which they may or may not be realized. When high quality, specific information was available, the journalistic imperative of balanced coverage too often resulted in trustworthy evidence from credible scientists reported alongside ill-informed opinions from the most popular celebrities and conflicted lobbyists [10]. Similar concerns were raised following the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003 [11,12].…”

Pre‐existing condition: Taking media coverage into account when preparing for H1N1

“…For months, governments had contributed to heightening awareness of H1N1. There was a large public bureaucracy working on pandemic response since SARS in 2003 (Liang ). As noted, H1N1 communications included press conferences, alert notices, brochures, downloads and a website.…”

“…This fact exposes a paradox: if people were confident the media exaggerated the threat, why was there such a surge in demand for the vaccine? Despite considerable attention, many questions about H1N1 and social responses to it remain unresolved (Grube ; Waterer, Hui and Jenkins ; Liang ; Fineberg ).…”

Drawing from the ‘bank of credibility’: perspectives of health officials and the public on media handling of the H1N1 pandemic

“…According to Laing's (2011) study of media coverage in the province of Ontario, pH1N1 was the dominant health issue in the media in 2009, and there were two major peaks in coverage. The first peak was when the virus arrived in Canada and into the first wave (April-May).…”

“…News of the child's death prompted a surge of people seeking H1N1 immunization just as vaccine clinics were opening, unfortunately coinciding with a last-minute reduction in the amount of vaccine initially available. Studies have found that news coverage of pH1N1 heavily promoted 'confusion' around vaccine roll-out, and was predominantly negative, with stories focusing on line-ups, access issues, inefficiencies, chaos at clinics, queue jumping, and people wanting vaccines in the face of shortages (Laing 2011;Quigley, Macdonald, and Quigley 2016). Similarly, research on public perceptions of news coverage of pH1N1 found that many Canadians believed that news organizations had acted irresponsibly by sensationalizing pandemic coverage and confusing people (Henrich and Holmes 2011;Taha, Matheson, and Anisman 2013;Laing 2011;).…”