Pandemic Communication in Time of Populism: Building Resilient Media and Ensuring Effective Pandemic Communication in Divided Societies

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This project uses several methods to study how populist politicians distorted COVID-19 pandemic health communication to encourage polarized attitudes and distrust among citizens, thus making them more vulnerable to misinformation generally. It also studies how best to counter these populist narratives and develop more effective communication channels. The research studies four areas of communication: government led pandemic communication, media policy, media coverage, and public attitudes towards the media. The project makes an important contribution to research on populist communication and political polarization by bringing two fields of expertise–populist communication and public health–together. The research will inform recommendations aimed at building more resilient media organizations that are better equipped to withstand the challenges of future pandemics in divided societies. By helping to improve the quality of health communication, this research will help to improve the health, hence living standards of US citizens. This project will develop the first comprehensive, comparative study of health crisis communication in the context of populist politics and examines the impact of populism on four aspects of the pandemic communication circuit during COVID-19: government-led health crisis communication, media policy, media coverage, and public attitudes. The project will also study how best to counter these populist narratives and develop more efficient and reliable communication. The focus is on four countries---Brazil, Poland, Serbia, and the US---all led by populist leaders during the pandemic and capture different types of populist responses to the pandemic. The project also takes a transnational perspective to analyze how the interaction between populism and pandemic communication was shaped by China and Russia’s pandemic geopolitics. By helping to improve the quality of health communication, this research will help to improve the health, hence living standards of US citizens.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.