Overview
Effective communication is of paramount importance for the successful management of a public crisis. Recent changes in both political and information environments have brought significant challenges for crisis communication. During the COVID-19 pandemic, distrust of elites and expert knowledge was widespread, especially in countries governed by populist politicians who sought to downplay health threats, challenge expert guidance, or spread misinformation. The information landscape became increasingly complex and difficult to navigate. Trustworthy reports about global threats to health and wellbeing, and about preventive measures that could be taken to contain crises, circulated alongside conspiracy theories.
This briefing is informed by the findings of the PANCOPOP project, which examined crisis communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research focused on four countries − Brazil, the USA, Poland and Serbia − characterised by high levels of political polarisation and misinformation, and governed at that time by right-wing populist leaders. The project was conducted by an international multidisciplinary team of scholars with expertise in political communication, public health, media policy and international relations. The work was supported by public research funding agencies from the UK, USA, Poland and Brazil in association with the Trans-Atlantic Platform for Social Sciences & Humanities.
The research team investigated how populism affected four aspects of the pandemic communication circuit between January 2020 and December 2022: government-led health crisis communication, media policy, media coverage and public attitudes. A fifth strand adopted a transnational perspective in analysing interactions with China’s and Russia’s vaccine diplomacy.
Key evidence
The research was conducted using a combination of five methods: secondary analysis of publicly available data; elite interviews with professionals involved in crisis communication (government officials, health experts and journalists); media policy analysis; quantitative and qualitative content analysis; and a representative population survey in each of the study countries.
This multi-level investigation showed that populist leadership in all four countries created three main challenges for crisis communication:
- Excessive politicisation of science, which occurred in different ways. In Brazil and the USA, politicians were attacking experts and silencing public health authorities, while in Serbia and Poland, science was co-opted and instrumentalised for political ends. This behaviour undermined the integrity of evidence-based decision-making, obstructed the effectiveness of emergency risk communication, and ultimately impaired society’s ability to move towards consensus and solidarity.
- Infringements of media freedom and lack of consistent counter-misinformation policies. In all four countries, journalists’ access to information became restricted. Despite problems caused by health misinformation, none of the four countries implemented a consistent policy in this area while populists were in power. In Brazil and the USA, populist leaders contributed to the spreading of misinformation, while in Poland and Serbia, populists in power abstained from actively challenging it.
- Reinforcement of populist beliefs among citizens undermined trust in experts and weakened resilience to misinformation. According to survey data, populist attitudes were a significant predictor of political distrust and misinformation beliefs in all countries. Populist voting played a similar role: misinformation beliefs were 36% higher on average among those who voted for populists than among those who voted for the opposition or abstained, with the difference particularly marked in Brazil (67%) and USA (52%), and less so in Poland (33%) and Serbia (20%).
Policy context
While all four countries represented cases of right-wing populism, they differed in their approaches to the public health crisis in ways consistent with previous research on populism and the pandemic. In Brazil and the USA, political leaders dismissed the seriousness of the health threat and sought to build political support by attacking the experts and public health institutions. In Poland and Serbia, political leaders initially embraced scientific expertise and presented themselves as defenders of the people against the health threat. They later pulled back from relying on expert advice when it became politically inconvenient, while using the emergency to enhance their power and limit oppositional voices. Despite these differences, the instability fed by populism created similar challenges for crisis communication in all four countries.
These domestic challenges interacted with the heightened geopolitical competition evident in China’s and Russia’s vaccine diplomacy efforts. While the presence of populism obstructed measured public debate in all four countries, Brazil and especially Serbia proved considerably more receptive to Chinese and Russian assistance, due partly to greater geopolitical openness towards the two countries, and partly to the slow provision of vaccines from the Global North.
Professionals interviewed by the project team developed a range of ad hoc solutions, many of which proved effective in tackling the new challenges presented by political instability and misinformation. The project findings provide examples of good practices in different policy contexts for public health authorities, media regulators and policymakers as well as news organisations and journalists. These include: efforts by regional and local public health authorities to engage with diverse communities and increased transparency in their decision-making processes; micro-grants for local organisations to help disseminate health information; court challenges to legal provisions that obstructed access to public information; journalists’ associations countering attacks on freedom of information; and the role of NGOs, digital platforms and journalists in combatting misinformation. These good practices are relevant for think tanks and other actors involved in public health policy.
Recommendations
The advice emerging from the analysis of the materials collected in the study covers freedom of information protection, management of political interference with the flow of information, enhanced protection of journalists, media literacy campaigns, and political independence of public service media.
Suggestions were made for improving governance structures of news organisations to guard against political instrumentalisation, and for meeting challenges in balancing the goals of disseminating official guidance while serving as a ‘watchdog’ of public authorities. Precautionary measures were designed to counter misinformation. The main recommendations are to:
- Maintain the autonomy and transparency of specialised agencies headed by professionals and the integrity of the scientific process in gathering and analysing information and formulating recommendations.
- Anticipate political contestation regarding public threats and preventive measures when revising existing guidance and training tools for public emergencies to ensure they incorporate advice and scenarios that compensate for the lack of support from political elites.
- Avoid purely top-down styles of communication when developing preventive measures, and develop mechanisms for dialogue with a range of actors, focusing on multipartisan solutions that will have a better chance of being more widely accepted.
- Nurture cooperative relationships with media organisations to ensure journalists’ questions are never left unanswered, and to facilitate media access to experts with suitable expertise.
- Develop and implement an integrated strategy for combatting misinformation both online and offline, designed to coordinate counter-misinformation efforts at national, regional and local levels, by engaging multiple stakeholders from media organisations, regulators, digital platforms and influencers in local communities, and paying special attention to vulnerable groups.
This briefing was written by Sabina Miheji.