Government communication strategy and its reflection on media construction of pandemic: A structured analysis of COVID-19 in India

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 outbreak led to challenges in framing communication strategy on the part of the government among various stakeholders and especially to the common people. The government communication approach should focus on the meaningful participation of people in vulnerable conditions to achieve the best-possible result. The study examines various factors concerning the inclusivity in communication approaches adopted by the government and subsequent media coverage in India during this crisis. The complete nationwide lockdown tenure is selected for the study to recognize the communication strategy of the government and media in the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in India. Two mainstream Indian dailies—The Hindu & The Times of India—have been assessed to analyze the media construction of the pandemic, and 42 websites of central government ministries are also analyzed to frame the nature of governmental communication policy. The study reveals that governmental communication strategies were mainly instructional and confined to the macro level rather than the micro level. During this period, media narratives were mostly associated with governmental initiatives of crisis management. It established government as a powerful social actor while diminishing the voice of other concerned stakeholders in crisis management.

KEYWORDS:

• government
• COVID-19
• lockdown
• communication strategy
• pandemic
• media

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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2 Ian Weber, Tan Howe Yang and Law Loo Shien, “Triumph over Adversity: Singapore Mobilizes Confucian Values to Combat SARS.” in The Social Construction of SARS, eds. John H. Powers and Xiaosui Xiao (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2008), 145–62.

3 J. Brian Houston, Wen-Yu Chau and Sandra Ragan, “Newspaper Coverage of the 2003 SARS Outbreak.” in The Social Construction (see note 2), 203–21.

4 Worldometer, “Countries where COVID-19 has spread,” https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/countries-where-coronavirus-has-spread/ (accessed June 27, 2021).

5 COVID-19 Impacts and Responses: The Indian Experience, National Disaster Management Authority (India: NDMA, 2020). https://ndma.gov.in/sites/default/files/PDF/COVID/COVID-19-Indian-Experience.pdf (accessed July 27, 2020).

6 Xiaosui Xiao, “A hero story without heroes: The Hong Kong government’s narratives on SARS.” in The Social Construction (see note 2), 33–52.

7 Houston, Chau and Ragan, “Newspaper Coverage of”, 218.

8 Peter LM Vasterman and Nel Ruigrok, “Pandemic alarm in the Dutch media: Media coverage of the 2009 influenza A (H1N1) pandemic and the role of the expert sources,” European Journal of Communication, 28 no. 4 (2013), doi:10.1177/0267323113486235, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0267323113486235

9 Weber, Yang and Shien, “Triumph over Adversity”, 146.

10 Xiao, “A hero story,” 34.

11 Chindu Sreedharan, “India: A spectacle of mismanagement.” in Political Communication and COVID-19: Governance and Rhetoric in Times of Crisis, eds. Darren Lilleker, Ioana A. Coman, Miloš Gregor and Edoardo Novelli (Oxford, U.K.: Routledge, 2021), 124–31.

12 Weber, Yang and Shien, “Triumph over Adversity”, 150.

13 Tiffany Sandell, Bernadette Sebar and Neil Harris, “Framing risk: Communication messages in the Australian and Swedish print media surrounding the 2009 H1N1 pandemic,” Scandinavian Journal of Public Health 41, no. 8 (2013), doi:10.1177/1403494813498158, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23873631/.

14 Houston, Chau and Ragan, “Newspaper Coverage of”, 219.

15 Vasterman and Ruigrok, “Pandemic alarm in”, 439.

16 Sreedharan, “India: A spectacle”, 123.

17 Klaus Krippendorff, Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology (Los Angeles: SAGE, 2004).

18 Ibid., 18.

19 ABC, “Highest Circulated Dailies, Weeklies & Magazines Amongst Member Publications (Across Languages),” http://www.auditbureau.org/files/JD%202019%20Highest%20Circulated%20(across%20languages).pdf (accessed , June, 2020).

20 Prannoy Roy, “More News is Good News: Democracy and Media in India.” in India’s Media Boom: The Good News and the Bad, ed. James Painter (Oxford, U.K.: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 2013), 3.

21 Sreedharan, “India: A spectacle”, 128.

22 Ritajyoti Bandopadhyay, Paula Banerjee and Ranabir Samaddar, “The Shiver of the Pandemic.” in India’s Migrant Workers and the Pandemic, eds. Ritajyoti Bandopadhyay, Paula Banerjee and Ranabir Samaddar (Oxford, U.K.: Routledge, 2022), 9.

 

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Priyam BasuThakur

Dr. Priyam BasuThakur is currently associated as a faculty in the Department of Journalism & Mass Communication, The Bhawanipur Education Society College, affiliated with the University of Calcutta, India. She was awarded a Ph.D. in television studies from the Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, India.

Sangita De

Dr. Sangita De is currently working as a faculty in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri College, affiliated with the University of Calcutta, India. She has completed her Ph.D. from the Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, India, and her topic was communication strategies in environmental communication.