2,943
Views
4
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Article

Transparency beyond information disclosure: strategies of the Scandinavian public health authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic

ORCID Icon, ORCID Icon, , , ORCID Icon, ORCID Icon & ORCID Icon show all
Pages 1176-1189 | Received 13 Oct 2021, Accepted 16 Apr 2022, Published online: 23 May 2022

References

  • Akselsen, Per Espen, Anne Mette Asfeldt, Carl-Fredrik Borchgrevink-Lund, Bjørn Brandsaeter, and Anita Wang Børseth. 2020. “Smittevernansvarlige i norske helseforetak gir full støtte til Folkehelseinstituttet” [Representatives with Responsibilities for Infection Control in Norwegian Health Organizations Give Full Support to the National Institute for Public Health]. Aftenposten, September 1.
  • Albu, Oana Brindusa., and Mikkel Flyverbom. 2019. “Organizational Transparency: Conceptualizations, Conditions, and Consequences.” Business & Society 58 (2): 268–297. doi:10.1177/0007650316659851.
  • Albu, Oana Brindusa, and Stefan Wehmeier. 2014. “Organizational Transparency and Sense-Making: The Case of Northern Rock.” Journal of Public Relations Research 26 (2): 117–133. doi:10.1080/1062726X.2013.795869.
  • Auger, Giselle A. 2014. “Trust Me, Trust Me Not: An Experimental Analysis of the Effect of Transparency on Organizations.” Journal of Public Relations Research 26 (4): 325–343. doi:10.1080/1062726X.2014.908722.
  • Bachmann, Reinhard, Nicole Gillespie, and Richard Priem. 2015. “Repairing Trust in Organizations and Institutions: Toward a Conceptual Framework.” Organization Studies 36 (9): 1123–1142. doi:10.1177/0170840615599334.
  • Balkin, J. M. 1999. “How Mass Media Simulate Political Transparency.” Cultural Values 3 (4): 393–413. doi:10.1080/14797589909367175.
  • Balog-Way, Dominic H. P., and Katherine A. McComas. 2020. “COVID-19: Reflections on Trust, Tradeoffs, and Preparedness.” Journal of Risk Research 23 (7–8): 838–811. doi:10.1080/13669877.2020.1758192.
  • Brashers, Dale E. 2001. “Communication and Uncertainty Management.” Journal of Communication 51 (3): 477–497. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2001.tb02892.x.
  • Christensen, Lars Thøger, and George Cheney. 2015. “Peering into Transparency: Challenging Ideals, Proxies, and Organizational Practices.” Communication Theory 25 (1): 70–90. doi:10.1111/comt.12052.
  • Christensen, Lars Thøger, and Roy Langer. 2009. “Public Relations and the Strategic Use of Transparency: Consistency, Hypocrisy, and Corporate Change.” In Rhetorical and Critical Approaches to Public Relations II, edited by Robert L. Heath, Elizabeth L. Toth, and Damion Waymer, 129–153. New York: Routledge.
  • Clementson, David E., and Tong Xie. 2021. “On the Merits of Transparency in Crisis: Effects of Answering vs. Evading through the Lens of Deception Theory.” International Journal of Strategic Communication 15 (1): 1–17. doi:10.1080/1553118X.2020.1836644.
  • Collins, Aengus, Marie-Valentine Florin, and Ortwin Renn. 2020. “COVID-19 Risk Governance: Drivers, Responses and Lessons to Be Learned.” Journal of Risk Research 23 (7–8): 1073–1082. doi:10.1080/13669877.2020.1760332.
  • Cotterrell, Roger. 1999. “Transparency, Mass Media, Ideology and Community.” Cultural Values 3 (4): 414–426. doi:10.1080/14797589909367176.
  • Directorate of Health. 2021. “Befolkningsundersøkelse Covid-19” [Population Survey Covid-19]. Accessed September 19. https://www.helsedirektoratet.no/tema/beredskap-og-krisehandtering/koronavirus/befolkningsundersokelse-covid-19.
  • Dixon, Graham, Katherine McComas, John Besley, and Joseph Steinhardt. 2016. “Transparency in the Food Aisle: The Influence of Procedural Justice on Views about Labeling GM Foods.” Journal of Risk Research 19 (9): 1158–1171. doi:10.1080/13669877.2015.1118149.
  • Driedger, S. Michelle, Ryan Maier, and Cindy Jardine. 2021. “Damned If You Do, and Damned If You Don’t’: Communicating about Uncertainty and Evolving Science during the H1N1 Influenza Pandemic.” Journal of Risk Research 24 (5): 574–519. doi:10.1080/13669877.2018.1459793.
  • Enria, L., N. Waterlow, N. T. Rogers, H. Brindle, S. Lal, R. M. Eggo, S. Lees, and C. H. Roberts. 2021. “Trust and Transparency in Times of Crisis: Results from an Online Survey during the First Wave (April 2020) of the COVID-19 Epidemic in the UK.” PloS One 16 (2): e0239247. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0239247.
  • Esaiasson, Peter, Jacob Sohlberg, Marina Ghersetti, and Bengt Johansson. 2021. “How the Coronavirus Crisis Affects Citizen Trust in Institutions and in Unknown Others: Evidence from ‘the Swedish Experiment.” European Journal of Political Research 60 (3): 748–760. doi:10.1111/1475-6765.12419.
  • European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. 2022. “COVID-19 Situation Update for the EU/EEA.” https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/cases-2019-ncov-eueea.
  • European Social Survey Round 9 Data. 2018. “Data File Edition 2.0. NSD - Norwegian for Research Data, Norway – Data Archive and Distributor of ESS data for ESS." doi:10.21338/NSD-ESS9-2018.
  • Fairbanks, Jenille, Kenneth D. Plowman, and Brad L. Rawlins. 2007. “Transparency in Government Communication.” Journal of Public Affairs 7 (1): 23–37. doi:10.1002/pa.245.
  • Fisher, Jolene, and Toby Hopp. 2020. “Does the Framing of Transparency Impact Trust? Differences between Self-Benefit and Other-Benefit Message Frames.” International Journal of Strategic Communication 14 (3): 203–222. doi:10.1080/1553118X.2020.1770767.
  • Flyverbom, Mikkel. 2016. “Digital Age| Transparency: Mediation and the Management of Visibilities.” International Journal of Communication 10: 13.
  • Folketinget. 2021. Håndteringen af covid-19 i foråret 2020 [The Handling of COVID-19 in the Spring of 2020]. Copenhagen, Denmark: Folketinget.
  • Foss, Kristine. 2020. “Flaviusprisen til Camilla Stoltenberg [The Flavius Prize Handed to Camilla Stoltenberg]." Norsk Presseforbund, Accessed September 30. https://presse.no/np-nyhet/flaviusprisen-til-camilla-stoltenberg/.
  • Gustafson, Abel, and Ronald E. Rice. 2020. “A Review of the Effects of Uncertainty in Public Science Communication.” Public Understanding of Science (Bristol, England) 29 (6): 614–633. doi:10.1177/0963662520942122.
  • Hagesaether, Pål Vegard. 2020. "Professor og virusekspert: – Utviklingen i Norge den siste uken har vaert omtrent som vi kunne anta [Professor and Virus Expert: The Development in Norway the Last Week Has Been More or Less as We Could Expect]." Afenposten, March 6.
  • Han, Paul K. J., Elizabeth Scharnetzki, Aaron M. Scherer, Alistair Thorpe, Christine Lary, Leo B. Waterston, Angela Fagerlin, and Nathan F. Dieckmann. 2021. “Communicating Scientific Uncertainty about the COVID-19 Pandemic: Online Experimental Study of an Uncertainty-Normalizing Strategy.” Journal of Medical Internet Research 23 (4): e27832. doi:10.2196/27832.
  • Hanson, Claudia, Susanne Luedtke, Neil Spicer, Jens Stilhoff Sörensen, Susannah Mayhew, and Sandra Mounier-Jack. 2021. “National Health Governance, Science and the Media: Drivers of COVID-19 Responses in Germany, Sweden and the UK in 2020.” BMJ Global Health 6 (12): e006691. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2021-006691.
  • Heald, David. 2006. “Transparency as an Instrumental Value.” In Transparency: The Key to Better Governance?, edited by C. Hood and David Heald, 59–74. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  • Holland, Derrick, Trent Seltzer, and Anna Kochigina. 2021. “Practicing Transparency in a Crisis: Examining the Combined Effects of Crisis Type, Response, and Message Transparency on Organizational Perceptions.” Public Relations Review 47 (2): 102017. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2021.102017.
  • Hood, Christopher. 2007. “What Happens When Transparency Meets Blame-Avoidance?” Public Management Review 9 (2): 191–210. doi:10.1080/14719030701340275.
  • Kjeldsen, Jens E., Ragnhild Mølster, and Øyvind Ihlen. 2022. “Expert Uncertainty: Arguments Bolstering the Ethos of Expertise in Situations of Uncertainty.” In The Pandemic of Argumentation, edited by S. Oswald, M. Lewinski, S. Greco, and S. Villata, 81–99. Berlin: Springer.
  • Koffman, J., J. Gross, S. N. Etkind, and L. Selman. 2020. “Uncertainty and COVID-19: How Are we to Respond?” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 113 (6): 211–216. doi:10.1177/0141076820930665.
  • Lee, Tae Ho, and Lois A. Boynton. 2017. “Conceptualizing Transparency: Propositions for the Integration of Situational Factors and Stakeholders’ Perspectives.” Public Relations Inquiry 6 (3): 233–251. doi:10.1177/2046147X17694937.
  • Lee, Yeunjae, and Jo‐Yun Queenie. Li. 2021. “The Role of Communication Transparency and Organizational Trust in Publics’ Perceptions, Attitudes and Social Distancing Behaviour: A Case Study of the COVID‐19 Outbreak.” Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 29 (4): 368–384. doi:10.1111/1468-5973.12354.
  • Lindstrom, M. 2020. “The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Swedish Strategy: Epidemiology and Postmodernism.” SSM Popul Health 11: 100643. doi:10.1016/j.ssmph.2020.100643.
  • Liu, Brooke Fisher, Logen Bartz, and Noreen Duke. 2016. “Communicating Crisis Uncertainty: A Review of the Knowledge Gaps.” Public Relations Review 42 (3): 479–487. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2016.03.003.
  • Löfstedt, Ragnar. 2013. “Transparency at the EMA: More Evidence is Needed.” Therapeutic Innovation & Regulatory Science 47 (3): 299–300. doi:10.1177/2168479012469946.
  • Löfstedt, Ragnar, and Jamie K. Wardman. 2016. “State of the Art Transparency: Lessons from Europe and North America.” Journal of Risk Research 19 (9): 1079–1081. doi:10.1080/13669877.2016.1249713.
  • Löfstedt, Ragnar, and Dominic Way. 2016. “Transparency and Trust in the European Pharmaceutical Sector: Outcomes from an Experimental Study.” Journal of Risk Research 19 (9): 1082–1103. doi:10.1080/13669877.2014.919517.
  • Löfstedt, Ragnar, Dominic Way, Frederic Bouder, and Darrick Evensen. 2016. “Transparency of Medicines Data and Safety Issues–a European/US Study of Doctors’ Opinions: What Does the Evidence Show?” Journal of Risk Research 19 (9): 1172–1184. doi:10.1080/13669877.2015.1121911.
  • Matheus, Ricardo, and Marijn Janssen. 2019. “A Systematic Literature Study to Unravel Transparency Enabled by Open Government Data: The Window Theory.” Public Performance & Management Review 43 (3): 1–34. doi:10.1080/15309576.2019.1691025.
  • Moon, M. J. 2020. “Fighting COVID-19 with Agility, Transparency, and Participation: Wicked Policy Problems and New Governance Challenges.” Public Administration Review 80 (4): 651–656. doi:10.1111/puar.13214.
  • NOU. 2021. NOU 2021:6 Myndighetenes håndtering av koronapandemien [NOU 2021:6 The Authorities’ Handling of the COVID-19 Pandemic]. Oslo, Norway.
  • Offerdal, Truls Strand, Just, Sine Nørholm, and Ihlen, Øyvind. 2021. “Public ethos in the pandemic rhetorical situation: Strategies for building trust in authorities’ risk communication.” Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research 4 (2): 247–270. doi:10.30658/jicrcr.4.2.3.
  • Öhman, Daniel, and Emelie Rosén. 2020. "Minskad insyn hos Folkhälsomyndigheten [Less Transparency in the the Public Health Agency of Sweden].” Sveriges Radio, June 1.
  • Petersen, Michael Bang, Alexander Bor, Frederik Jørgensen, and Marie Fly Lindholt. 2021. “Transparent Communication about Negative Features of COVID-19 Vaccines Decreases Acceptance But Increases Trust.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118 (29): e2024597118. doi:10.1073/pnas.2024597118.
  • Petersen, Michael Bang, and Andreas Roepstorff. 2021. Danskernes adfaerd og holdninger til corona-epidemien [The Behaviour and Attitudes of the Danes towards the Corona Epidemic]. Aarhus, Denmark: University of Aarhus.
  • Public Health Agency of Sweden. 2020. "Pressträff om covid-19 (coronavirus) 11 mars 2020 [Press Meeting about COVID-19 (Coronavirus) March 11, 2020] [Video]." YouTube, March 11.
  • Rawlins, Brad. 2008. “Give the Emperor a Mirror: Toward Developing a Stakeholder Measurement of Organizational Transparency.” Journal of Public Relations Research 21 (1): 71–99. doi:10.1080/10627260802153421.
  • Stohl, Cynthia, Michael Stohl, and Paul M. Leonardi. 2016. “Digital Age| Managing Opacity: Information Visibility and the Paradox of Transparency in the Digital Age.” International Journal of Communication 10: 15.
  • van der Bles, A. M., S. van der Linden, A. L. J. Freeman, and D. J. Spiegelhalter. 2020. “The Effects of Communicating Uncertainty on Public Trust in Facts and Numbers.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 117 (14): 7672–7683. doi:10.1073/pnas.1913678117.
  • Wardman, Jamie K. 2020. “Recalibrating Pandemic Risk Leadership: Thirteen Crisis Ready Strategies for COVID-19.” Journal of Risk Research 23 (7–8): 1092–1120. doi:10.1080/13669877.2020.1842989.
  • Wardman, Jamie K., and Ragnar Lofstedt. 2020. “COVID-19: Confronting a New World Risk.” Journal of Risk Research 23 (7–8): 833–837. doi:10.1080/13669877.2020.1842988.
  • Warren, George W., Ragnar Lofstedt, and Jamie K. Wardman. 2021. “COVID-19: The Winter Lockdown Strategy in Five European Nations.” Journal of Risk Research 24 (3–4): 267–293. doi:10.1080/13669877.2021.1891802.
  • Way, Dominic, Frederic Bouder, Ragnar Löfstedt, and Darrick Evensen. 2016. “Medicines Transparency at the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in the New Information Age: The Perspectives of Patients.” Journal of Risk Research 19 (9): 1185–1215. doi:10.1080/13669877.2016.1200652.