Constituting good health citizenship through British Columbia's COVID-19 public updates.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has augmented discourses of individual citizen responsibility for collective health. This article explores how British Columbia, Canada's widely praised COVID-19 communication participates in the development of neo-communitarian "active citizenship" governmentalities focused on the civic duty of voluntarily taking responsibility for the health of one's community. We do so by investigating how public health updates from BC's acclaimed Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry articulate this civic imperative through the rhetorical constitution of the "good covid citizen." Our rhetorical analysis shows how this pro-social communication interpellates citizens within a discourse of behavioral, epistemic, and ethical responsibilisation. The communal ethos constituted through this public health communication significantly increases the burden of personal responsibility for health beyond norms of self-care. Making the protection of community health primarily the responsibility of individual citizens also presumes a privileged identity of empowered, active agency and implicitly excludes citizens who lack the means to successfully fulfill the expectations of good covid citizenship.