Strategic COVID-19 management in communicational practice: At the crossroads to remain open or not in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
2022 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
This paper examines how leading politicians and representatives of the public health authorities in Scandinavia attempted to create consent for their strategic choices to adopt, or refrain from, collective prevention measures such as border and school closures when such measures became relevant in the region in March 2020. It thus also concerns the broader strategic choices of the administrations in their attempts to curb or stop the coronavirus. Based on a strategy-as-practice perspective (SAP), we assume that strategies are not artefacts that organizations only have, but they are shaped, consolidated, and made public communicatively. The study’s analysis of statements from press conferences shows how strategies are shaped communicatively through claims regarding a number of themes such as economic consequences; the validity of epidemiological measures; secondary public health effects; the issue of risk severity and in the Swedish case natural immunity; and risk management history. The paper also highlights the pragmatic arguments used and the dialogicality involved when a particular strategic choice is made viable through the presentation of alternatives. It thus helps to bridge a gap between, on the one hand, major response choices facing national and agency leaders, and, on the other hand, numerous micro-level communication efforts facilitated in part through press conferences.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2022.
Keywords [en]
COVID-19 strategy, collective prevention, strategy-as-practice (SAP), Scandinavia, press conferences
National Category
Communication Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-100714OAI: oai:DiVA.org:oru-100714DiVA, id: diva2:1688217
Conference
72nd Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, One World, One Network‽, Paris, France, May 26-30, 2022
Projects
Pandemic Rhetoric (PAR)
Funder
The Research Council of Norway2022-08-182022-08-182024-02-29Bibliographically approved