"Save a Life, Give Blood?": An exploration of NHS Blood and Transplant's public health messaging in the pandemic media ecology

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Pubic Health Messaging (PHM) calling for the donation of blood and later convalescent plasma from recovered COVID-19 cases, is situated in an increasingly busy public domain vying for viewer attention. As a vast flow of COVID-19 information, misinformation, and disinformation spreads through an overwhelmed and evolving 'media ecology' (McLuhan, 1964); the effect of the 'infodemic' on PHM cannot be underestimated (Zarocostas, 2000). Simultaneously, there was a drop in public trust in both the messengers and the message as a national controversy erupted, the catalyst for this being Dominic Cummings actions. Generating disapproval in the media, raising questions about accountability, transparency, and equality, while several scientists spoke out about Cummings actions, the conduct of the UK government impacted critical public health messaging and attitudes towards which PHM messages and messengers to trust (Fancourt et al., 2020; Mahase, 2020; O'Dowd, 2020). Not only are trust and compliance correlated with a populations willingness to follow rules and guidelines, pre-, during and post COVID-19 pandemic (Fancourt et al., 2020), essentially affecting the health care systems ability to control infection and mortality and recovery (Bargain and Aminjonov, 2020).