Symbolic politics and government response to a national emergency: Narrating the COVID-19 crisis

Abstract

The U.S. government’s response to the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic has raised questions of whether its role is in fact limited to symbolic politics courtesy of its highly fragmented authority. This paper deconstructs the most prominent federal government outreach to the American people at the outset of the COVID-19 crisis—the White House Coronavirus Task Force briefings, to show how government actions have been communicated to the public. Within the Kübler-Ross’ five-stage theory of grief, several narratives are surveyed as they are being circulated, tested and/or abandoned. It is argued that engaging in the enactment of narratives is one logical avenue for a crisis mitigation reimagined in postmodern terms. This serves as yet another reminder of how policy deliberation could be replaced with symbolic acts via discursive manipulation to the detriment of democratic public administration.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• enacted narratives
• postmodern presidency
• symbolic politics
• White House Task Force briefings

Note

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the anonymous referee and the editor for their helpful feedback.

Notes

1 Full transcripts of all forty-nine White House Coronavirus Task force briefings are available on the official White House website (www.whitehouse.gov) through search function for Coronavirus. Videos of the televised events by date are freely accessible on youtube.com.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Albena Dzhurova

Albena Dzhurova is a Ph.D. student at the School of Public Administration, Florida Atlantic University. Her research interests include public policy, postmodernism, critical theory, and interpretive methods.