“Look After Each Other”– Ethical Concerns in the Use of Communicative Appeals to Solidarity in the Face of a Pandemic

ABSTRACT

During the recent COVID-19 pandemic international organizations and national and local governments employed appeals to solidarity or “we-messages” for the purpose of encouraging the public to adopt mitigation measures and to help more vulnerable others. Since appeals to solidarity inherently aim to influence people’s views and practices, they raise ethical concerns similar to concerns associated with health communication persuasive campaigns (e.g. respect for autonomy, personal responsibility, stigmatization) and concerns more specifically associated with appeals to solidarity (e.g. divisiveness). The first part of the paper introduces a conceptual distinction between two types of approaches to solidarity according to an instrumental or moral emphasis. Appeals to solidarity according to this distinction are illustrated with examples from the COVID-19 pandemic. The second part summarizes normative justifications and advantages for employing appeals to solidarity. The third part presents ethical concerns associated with appealing to solidarity in the time of a pandemic. Drawing on these concerns, the final part presents propositions for normative conditions for employing solidarity appeals in a time of a pandemic and notes the importance of research needed to identify additional ethical concerns and conceptions of solidarity in multicultural societies. It concludes with noting the importance of employing appeals to solidarity that go beyond mitigating the pandemic and of conducting a critical discourse on the mandate of the state to make “top-down” moral demands.

Acknowledgements

The examples in the paper are part of a study supported by a grant from The Israel National Institute for Health Policy Research on communicating to the public about COVI-19. The paper greatly benefited from thoughtful and challenging comments and the generous and helpful suggestions from two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. This paper focuses on appeals to promote mitigation practices within nations. Therefore, it does not discuss issues related to global solidarity. However, the importance of cross-nation solidarity is noted in the conclusion.

2. The conceptualization of instrumental appeals also draws on Habermas’s discussion of strategic communication in which the goal is instrumental and pre-established, in contrast to communicative action that aims to achieve understandings (e.g., Johnson, 1991. Buchanan (2006) discusses strategic ‘instrumental reason’ and control in health promotion ethics, also drawing on Habermas and other scholars (e.g., Weber, Taylor). The categorization of ‘moral appeals’ can be related to the ‘practical reason’ approach (also in Buchanan, 2006), which reflects on values and the purpose of human action and the good they aim to achieve. A characterization of strategic appeals in health communication interventions associated with responsibility is presented (Guttman, 2000).

3. Scholars note that appeals to solidarity might be used for goals that are not necessarily moral or prosocial (Prainsack & Buyx, 2012).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the The Israeli National Institute for Health Policy Research [2020/529].