COVID-19 Messaging Research Articles

Learning from Ritual: Covid-19 Public Health Measures and Messaging in Timor-Leste

In this paper, I reflect on the significance of ritual activity directed towards COVID-19 in Timor-Leste. What, if anything, it tells us about East Timorese beliefs and attitudes regarding infectious disease and why understanding the cultural dimensions of infectious disease is critical to public health responses. Timor-Leste recorded its first COVID-19 case on March 21st, 2020. Over the course of the following weeks elders held ritual ceremonies across the country to mobilise the ancestors and ask for their assistance to keep COVID-19 at bay. These ceremonies circulated widely on social media within Timor-Leste and among the East Timorese diaspora. In parallel to this initial flourishing of ritual activity the government swiftly enacted legislation to declare a state of emergency, closing international borders and establishing quarantine centres across the country. In many ways the health authorities’ response to COVID-19 has been exemplary, with low case numbers and 0 deaths throughout 2020. However, since February 2021 COVID-19 cases have increased exponentially, exposing social cleavages based on education, language and socio-economic position. With limited resources, the health authorities, and in particular the Centre for Integrated Crisis Management, have focused on prevention, contact tracing and testing, adhering to WHO guidelines and emphasising ‘best practices. Yet, the response has been criticized for being top-down and heavy handed. For example, certain public health measures, such as mandatory testing and burial protocols, have been poorly communicated to the broader community. The use of bio-medical language and introduction of new terms and concepts has been excessively didactic and lacks local contextualization. For the majority of the population of Timor-Leste, especially those living in rural areas, lived experiences of illness and disease are interpreted primarily through and by customary beliefs and practices. The rituals directed towards COVID-19 demonstrate a clear understanding of the nature of infection, contamination, disease, models of causality and fears around infection. They also reveal local capacities to contain epidemics and the ability to learn with the bio-medical response. The levels of participation observed in COVID-19 rituals online and local support for these initiatives expressed on social media suggests at the very least that health authorities should engage with local communities in a two-way dialogue to discuss beliefs and existing prevention strategies that can assist and support public health objectives and measures.

COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy: How discrepant public health discourses shape responsibility for fetal health

Early in COVID-19 vaccine rollout, expert recommendations about vaccination while pregnant and breastfeeding changed rapidly. This paper addresses the (re)production of gendered power relations in these expert discourses and recommendations in Canada. We collected texts about COVID-19 vaccine use in pregnancy (N ​= ​52) that Canadian health organizations (e.g., professional societies, advisory groups, health authorities) and vaccine manufacturers made publicly available online. A discourse analysis was undertaken to investigate intertextuality (relations between texts), social construction (incorporation of assumptions about gender), and contradictions between and within texts.National expert recommendations varied in stating COVID-19 vaccines are recommended, should be offered, or may be offered, while manufacturer texts consistently stated there was no evidence. Provincial and territorial texts reproduced discrepancies between the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada and National Advisory Committee on Immunization recommendations, including that COVID-19 vaccines should be versus may be offered in pregnancy. Our findings suggest gaps in data and discrepant COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, eligibility, and messaging limit guidance regarding vaccination in pregnancy. We argue that these discrepancies magnified the already common practice of deferring responsibility for the uncertainties of vaccination in pregnancy onto parents and healthcare providers. The deferral of responsibility could be reduced by harmonizing recommendations, regularly updating texts that describe evidence and recommendations, and prioritizing research into disease burden, vaccine safety, and efficacy before vaccine rollout.

COVID-19 messages targeting young people on social media: content analysis of Australian health authority posts.

Health authorities utilized social media during the COVID-19 pandemic to disseminate critical and timely health messages, specifically targeting priority groups such as young people. To understand how social media was used for this purpose, we investigated the content of COVID-19-related social media posts targeting young people (16-29 years old) shared by Australian health departments. Posts targeting young people with COVID-19 information were extracted from all eight Australian State and Territory health department Facebook, Instagram and TikTok accounts over 1 month of the Delta outbreak (September 2021) and analysed thematically. In total, 238 posts targeting young people were identified from 1059 COVID-19 posts extracted. All eight health departments used Facebook, five used Instagram and only one used TikTok. The majority of posts implicitly targeted young people; only 14.7% explicitly mentioned age or 'young people'. All posts included accompanying visuals; 77% were still images like photos or illustrations whilst 23% were moving images like videos and GIFs. Communication techniques included calls to action (63% of posts), responsive communication (32% of posts) and positive emotional appeal (31% of posts). Social marketing techniques catering to young people were used to varying extents despite receiving higher levels of engagement; 45% featured emojis whilst only 16% used humour, 14% featured celebrities and 6% were memes. Priority groups like ethnic/cultural groups and chronic health/disability communities were rarely targeted in this communication. The findings indicate a lack of health communication on social media directed towards young people, highlighting an opportunity for increased use of platforms like TikTok and trends popular with young people online.

Reprint of: COVID-19 messaging in U.S. state parks: Extensions of the outdoor recreation strategies and practices framework unmasked by the pandemic.

The temporal issue of COVID-19 as a stressor and the spatial nature of its impact across whole social landscapes implores park managers to pay special attention to the critical time in a potential visitor's visit-cycle: the planning and anticipation stages. It is here that effective messaging about the park's integration of expert authority data, detailed communication about park-level responses, and awareness of beyond-park contexts can help potential visitors decide how to safely recreate. This examination highlights the importance of pre-visit safety messaging and provides specific examples of how the outdoor recreation strategies and practices framework can assist park managers in targeting visitor use management communications and actions. Given this strategies and practices framework's usefulness to park managers and ubiquity across parks, we examine ways to expand it to consider broader and emergent contexts.

A multimodal discourse study of selected COVID-19 online public health campaign texts in Nigeria.

This paper discusses web-based public health discursive practices during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Nigeria. It utilises a multimodal discourse approach to explore how a combination of textual and visual resources was deployed to communicate informative and educative public health safety campaigns during the period. Essentially, this study discusses multimodal resources as a rhetorical technique for creating a public discursive engagement space designed to educate the public and mitigate the effect of the pandemic. The dataset was collected during and after the lockdown in 2020 (March-September) through media monitoring and manual downloading of relevant online COVID-19 posts, messages and public health advisories largely from WhatsApp platforms and the portals of some Nigerian national newspapers. Using insights from relevant approaches in discourse analysis (e.g. Multimodal Discourse and Critical Discourse Analysis), we adopted a qualitative content analysis approach to analyse on how online posts as multimodal resources amplify the role of social media affordances in producing and promoting public safety messages helped to control the spread and mitigate the effects of the pandemic. The study also shows that discursive and multimodal resources were deliberately deployed to increase the effectiveness of the technology-driven public health campaign. To a large extent, multimodal resources were found to complement lexico-semantic properties of online communication, where social media messages are created, crafted and reconstructed within a uniquely Nigerian public discourse context. The study further illustrates the increasing importance of web-based platforms as discursive sites for enacting and negotiating meanings during event-driven social activities and public engagement in the Global South.

Culture of Honor and COVID-19: Regional Mitigation Efforts in the United States During the Pandemic

As the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, states in the United States (U.S.) varied widely in the arrival of the first case of the virus, the official response of government officials and citizens, and the overall impact of the virus. The Culture of Honor, a reputation-based system more prevalent in the U.S. South and West, is linked with lawlessness or mistrust of the law where it exists, fierce independence, and condones aggressive behaviors, particularly in response to threat. The current project explored the influence of the Culture of Honor on perceptions of the legitimacy of COVID-19 messaging, government actions and citizens responses, and overall impact of the pandemic at the state level. It was predicted that the overall numbers of citizens infected by COVID-19 would be higher in culture of honor states, that any actions taken by government officials would be strict and perceived negatively by citizens residing in culture of honor states, and that citizens would be unlikely to follow any imposed government restrictions. Publicly available data were compiled for each of the U.S. states including total number of COVID-19 cases, total deaths, how the elected officials managed any coordinated response (such as issuing executive orders, any stay-at-home or lockdown orders), and coded evidence of citizens violating any of these orders such as by protesting or showing up at public locations that were currently closed. I am deeply indebted to Luke Conway for providing access to an individual-level dataset collected via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) that included 978 people from across the U.S. who had responded to items related to these variables of interest. Analyses indicated that individuals in US states identified as Culture of Honor had seen greater impact to their states of the COVID-19 pandemic as of 2020 in several ways, including higher total number of citizens who tested positive and also died from COVID-19, less support for government action to mitigate the spread, and stronger distrust of information shared by their state authorities about the pandemic. These findings indicate that cultural values including the Culture of Honor could impede state-level attempts to thwart the spread of contagious diseases and other measures intended to protect individuals.

Understanding COVID-19 Risk Perceptions and Precautionary Behaviors in Black Chicagoans: A Grounded Theory Approach.

To determine whether actual community-level risk for COVID-19 in the Black community influenced individual perceptions of community-level and personal risk and how self-assessment of personal risk was reflected in the adoption of COVID-19 precautionary behaviors. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 20 Black Chicago adults from February to July 2021. A grounded theory approach was used for the qualitative analysis and initial, focused, and theoretical coding were performed. We developed a grounded model consisting of four major themes: (a) Pre-Existing Health Conditions; (b) Presence of COVID-19 Infection in Participant Social Network; (c) COVID-19-Related Information, Participant Trust, and Perceived Personal Risk; and (d) Perceived Higher Burden of COVID-19 in the Black Community. Higher perceptions of personal risk were shaped by pre-existing health conditions and experiences with COVID-19 in one's social network but were not influenced by perceived higher burden of COVID-19 in the Black community. Black adults' perceptions of their individual risk and precautionary behaviors were not congruent with public health data and recommendations. Therefore, COVID-19 messaging and mitigation should be informed by local community engagement and transparent communication.

Advertising in the Times of COVID: A Tight-Loose Analysis of Pandemic-Related TV Commercials

This research explores normative beliefs advocated in the earliest stage of the COVID-19 public health crisis. The exploration utilizes Tight-Loose Theory and Hofstede’s dimensions as frameworks to analyze N = 377 COVID-centered ads run from March to June 2020. The findings from this research support the presence of both tight and loose orientations in ads dedicated to COVID-19 messaging. The outcome is contrary to what one might expect in the US, a country where a loose orientation generally dominates societal norms. This research establishes a benchmark for comparison with the evolutionary stages of branded messages related to COVID-19.

COVID-19 Messaging on Social Media for American Indian and Alaska Native Communities: Thematic Analysis of Audience Reach and Web Behavior.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, tribal and health organizations used social media to rapidly disseminate public health guidance highlighting protective behaviors such as masking and vaccination to mitigate the pandemic's disproportionate burden on American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities. Seeking to provide guidance for future communication campaigns prioritizing AI/AN audiences, this study aimed to identify Twitter post characteristics associated with higher performance, measured by audience reach (impressions) and web behavior (engagement rate). We analyzed Twitter posts published by a campaign by the Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health from July 2020 to June 2021. Qualitative analysis was informed by in-depth interviews with members of a Tribal Advisory Board and thematically organized according to the Health Belief Model. A general linearized model was used to analyze associations between Twitter post themes, impressions, and engagement rates. The campaign published 162 Twitter messages, which organically generated 425,834 impressions and 6016 engagements. Iterative analysis of these Twitter posts identified 10 unique themes under theory- and culture-related categories of framing knowledge, cultural messaging, normalizing mitigation strategies, and interactive opportunities, which were corroborated by interviews with Tribal Advisory Board members. Statistical analysis of Twitter impressions and engagement rate by theme demonstrated that posts featuring culturally resonant community role models (P=.02), promoting web-based events (P=.002), and with messaging as part of Twitter Chats (P<.001) were likely to generate higher impressions. In the adjusted analysis controlling for the date of posting, only the promotion of web-based events (P=.003) and Twitter Chat messaging (P=.01) remained significant. Visual, explanatory posts promoting self-efficacy (P=.01; P=.01) and humorous posts (P=.02; P=.01) were the most likely to generate high-engagement rates in both the adjusted and unadjusted analysis. Results from the 1-year Twitter campaign provide lessons to inform organizations designing social media messages to reach and engage AI/AN social media audiences. The use of interactive events, instructional graphics, and Indigenous humor are promising practices to engage community members, potentially opening audiences to receiving important and time-sensitive guidance.

Receiving COVID-19 Messages on Social Media to the People of Semarang City

During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media has become one of the ways to convey information quickly with internet technology. Of the many uses of social media in obtaining information about COVID-19. Of course, not all are accurate. There are many hoaxes or fake news, while on the other hand, the news happened according to the facts. Confirmed cases found in Semarang City were 88,014 cases with a death toll of 4,460 people. This study aims to find out how to receive information about COVID-19 on social media in the community of Semarang City. This study uses an analytic observational study with a cross-sectional design conducted in June-July 2021. The research sample is Semarang residents who have social media with an age range of 15-65 years. The results showed that 68% of respondents believed in information related to COVID-19 on social media. 80% can distinguish hoaxes from true information related to COVID-19 from social media. 71% of respondents confirmed the truth of the news obtained about COVID-19 from Social media. Some respondents believe in the information on social media WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and Telegram. So growing digital literacy skills are expected to help the government overcome the issue of corona hoaxes and vaccines that are still emerging. The improved critical way of thinking is expected to be the countermeasure.

The influence of COVID-19 messaging on immunization and other outcomes

The CDC reported COVID-19 disparities in outcomes between rural and urban areas. These may be related to differences in perceived severity of disease subsequent to discrepant public messaging. This study assessed the impact of different COVID-19 messaging in Georgia rural and urban counties on immunization, cases, and death rates. The research design was longitudinal retrospective using mixed methods with secondary data from Georgia public databases (January 2020–July 2022) and COVID-19 messaging information from public agencies’ websites. The sample included 120 urban and 39 rural counties. Outcome variables included COVID-19 cases, mortality, and vaccination rates, and predictor variables included type of information related to COVID-19 and geographical location (rural/urban). Quantitative data were analyzed with IBM SPSS27 and qualitative data with NVivo 12 Plus. Preliminary findings indicate no significant rural/urban differences in cases (M rural = 24,152.9, SD = 6080.2, and M urban = 25,137.1, SD = 2885.5 per 100,000), however significantly higher rural deaths (mean difference = 177.9, SE = 30.6, 95% CI [117.4–238.3], P < .001). Urban vaccination rates were significantly higher (mean difference = 5.18, SE = 1.54, CI [2.15, 8.22], P < .001). Preliminary qualitative analysis found fewer rural sources of information about severity of disease, testing options, and vaccination compared to urban areas. Rural/urban disparities in COVID-19 outcomes and vaccination were statistically significant in death rates and vaccination rates, despite similar number of cases recorded over the study period. Limited access to information about COVID-19 in rural counties explain some of the variability.

Health Messaging During a Pandemic: How Information Type and Individual Factors Influence Responses to COVID-19 Messages

Traditional approaches to public health messaging suggest successful COVID-19 messages should communicate about the health threat and present effective protective behaviors. However, as the pandemic continues, how individual factors affect audience responses to such messages needs to be explored. We surveyed 224 U.S. residents (equal distribution among age group, education level, and gender) in a 2 (health threat information: high versus low) × 2 (self-efficacy information: present versus absent) × 2 (response efficacy information: present versus absent) experimental design. Variations in message information did not influence mask wearing and handwashing behavioral intentions. Instead, participant responses followed reactance theory predictions. Feelings of fear about COVID-19 and reactance proneness predicted a perceived freedom threat. Perceiving a freedom threat predicted reactance to the COVID-19 message, which was associated with decreased intentions to wear a mask and handwash. Political ideology was also associated with behavioral intentions. The more conservative a person identified, the less likely they were to intend to engage in COVID-19 protection behaviors. Our findings call into question the effectiveness of traditional health messaging during a pandemic and demonstrate the implications of politicizing health behaviors.

‘Stay home and stay safe … but maybe you can have somebody over’: public perceptions of official COVID-19 messages during the 2020 holiday season in Canada

ABSTRACT Background The COVID-19 pandemic triggered extreme preventive measures, including economic and social lockdowns. Many experts and commentators, however, have argued in favor of a harm reduction approach, giving individuals the liberty to assess their risk and potentially engage in risky behavior more safely. Drawing on concepts from harm reduction literature we examine how Canadians interpreted messages intended to mitigate harm during the 2020 end-of-year holiday season. Methods We conducted 12 focus groups in four Canadian cities to discuss public health guidance to reduce the spread of COVID-19, how these messages influenced their holiday celebration plans, and how they interpreted harm mitigation messages. Results Focus group participants (n = 82) described COVID-19 public health guidance as confusing and difficult to follow. Participants considered that messages intended to mitigate harm from official sources would contribute to deepening confusion and uncertainty, allow for personal interpretation of guidelines, and discourage those who follow guidelines diligently. Conclusion Official public health messaging intended to mitigate harm in rapidly evolving crisis situations can be ineffective in reducing risky behaviors because it may instead encourage people to not abide the recommended guidelines. In these situations, harm reduction messaging should be limited to specific groups who cannot otherwise avoid risk exposure.

COVID-19 messages in sponsored social media posts: The positive impact of influencer-brand fit and prior parasocial interaction.

This study explores the dissemination potential of a COVID-19 message embedded in a sponsored social media post. The moderating role of prior parasocial interaction and influencer-brand fit were considered. 365 respondents participated in the study. A 3 (control, congruent, incongruent brand) × 2 (control, COVID-19 message) between-subject online experiment was designed and executed. Data were analyzed using a mediated moderation model. Results indicated that the three-way interaction of the COVID-19 message, brand presence and prior parasocial interaction affected the perceived influencer credibility, attitudes towards the social media post, and the behavioral engagement with the post. When the COVID-19 message was included in the post, increased prior parasocial interaction intensified the positive effect of influencer-brand fit on influencer credibility, which in turn resulted in a more positive attitude towards the post, and a higher behavioral engagement. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

4 COVID-19 Vaccine Messaging Platforms Increase Vaccine Acceptance and Uptake in Unvaccinated Emergency Department Patients: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial

4 COVID-19 Vaccine Messaging Platforms Increase Vaccine Acceptance and Uptake in Unvaccinated Emergency Department Patients: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial

Subjective norms as a moderator in the consumption behaviour of branded functional beverages post-COVID-19 pandemic: a pragmatic view

PurposeThis study aims to experimentally investigate branded functional beverage (BFB) consumption behaviour post-COVID-19 through the lens of a conceptual framework built on three renowned behaviour modification models and to critically evaluate how well subjective norms serve as a moderator in the consumption behaviour relating to such beverage products.Design/methodology/approachA conceptual model was developed based on the tenets of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), health belief model (HBM) and value-attitude-behaviour (VAB) model. The study was performed on a convenience sample of 537 respondents aged 18 and up from diverse regions in India using the PLS-SEM method. A total of 444 useable questionnaires were utilized for the final data analysis.FindingsGiven the post-pandemic setting, the perceived benefits of BFBs significantly influenced its purchase intention and consumption behaviour. It could grossly impact the media's role (information about COVID-19) and the consumers' interest in healthy food. The study revealed that the information about COVID-19 (role of media) strongly increased interest in healthy food, whereas interest in healthy food positively influenced purchase intention of functional beverages. With interest in healthy food as a “mediator”, the role of media (information about COVID-19) positively influenced purchase intention. It is worth noting the moderating role of subjective norms in the relationship between the role of media (information about COVID-19) and interest in healthy food and that between interest in healthy food and BFB purchase intention.Practical implicationsFood marketers shall skillfully use “opinion” leaders and subject experts in marketing communication campaigns to popularize the link between good food and immunity through COVID-19 and healthy diet-related messages sent via a suitable media platform. This would grab food consumers' interest in BFBs and persuade them to incorporate such items in their daily food milieu. Consumers need to be assured that consuming “functional” products would deliver health benefits and upkeep their body immunity in the post-COVID-19 times.Originality/valueThere has been minimal research on the link between perceived benefits, the role of media, interest in healthy food and consumption behaviour on functional beverages in the post-COVID-19 setting. Moreover, subjective norms have never been probed as a moderator in the consumer behaviour studies on BFBs. This pioneering study applied the tenets of the TPB, HBM and VAB model in the context of post-pandemic functional beverage consumption. The altered study settings caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the context of a developing economy like India have amplified the research value of this study.

Australian public health COVID-19 messaging is missing its mark in some vulnerable communities and people who reject COVID-19 safety advice.

BackgroundThere are groups in our community who may be more vulnerable to contracting, transmitting, or experiencing negative health impacts of COVID-19 than the general community. They may also have greater difficulty accessing, accepting, and acting upon COVID-19 public health information. Our aim was to understand if vulnerable communities and those who express “COVID-risk” behavioural intentions seek and respond differently to COVID-19 public health information.MethodsThis observational, cross-sectional study recruited adults aged over 18 years from the Australian general community and six community groups (people with disabilities and their caregivers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, aged care workers, street-based sex workers, refugees and asylum seekers, and the deaf and hard of hearing). We investigated attitudes and beliefs about COVID-19 public health messages. We identified factors associated with the respondent’s perception of the ease of finding information and understanding it, and its relevance to them. We also examined latent classes that were developed based on attitudes to public health measures and vulnerable group categories, along with demographic variables.ResultsWe received 1444 responses (n = 1121 general community; n ≥50 for each vulnerable group). The vulnerable groups examined found COVID-19 public health messages as easy, if not easier, to find and understand than the general community. Four latent classes were identified: COVID-safe mask wearers (10% of sample), COVID-safe test takers (56%), COVID-risk isolators (19%) and COVID-risk visitors (15%). The COVID-risk classes (34% of sample) were less likely to consider COVID-19 information easy to find, understandable, and relevant.ConclusionsAdditional public health messaging strategies may be needed for targeting people with “COVID-risk” beliefs and attitudes who appear across the community (general and vulnerable groups) rather than just targeting specific cultural or other groupings that we think may be vulnerable. COVID-risk classes identified through this study were not defined by demographic characteristics or cultural groupings, but were spread across vulnerable communities and the general community. Different approaches for tailoring and delivery of specific public health information for these groups are needed.

An exploration of Canadian government officials' COVID-19 messages and the public's reaction using social media data.

Governments can use social media platforms such as Twitter to disseminate health information to the public, as evidenced during the COVID-19 pandemic [Pershad (2018)]. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of Canadian government and public health officials’ use of Twitter as a dissemination platform during the pandemic and to explore the public’s engagement with and sentiment towards these messages. We examined the account data of 93 Canadian public health and government officials during the first wave of the pandemic in Canada (December 31, 2019 August 31, 2020). Our objectives were to: 1) determine the engagement rates of the public with Canadian federal and provincial/territorial governments and public health officials’ Twitter posts; 2) conduct a hashtag trend analysis to explore the Canadian public’s discourse related to the pandemic during this period; 3) provide insights on the public’s reaction to Canadian authorities’ tweets through sentiment analysis. To address these objectives, we extracted Twitter posts, replies, and associated metadata available during the study period in both English and French. Our results show that the public demonstrated increased engagement with federal officials’ Twitter accounts as compared to provincial/territorial accounts. For the hashtag trends analysis of the public discourse during the first wave of the pandemic, we observed a topic shift in the Canadian public discourse over time between the period prior to the first wave and the first wave of the pandemic. Additionally, we identified 11 sentiments expressed by the public when reacting to Canadian authorities’ tweets. This study illustrates the potential to leverage social media to understand public discourse during a pandemic. We suggest that routine analyses of such data by governments can provide governments and public health officials with real-time data on public sentiments during a public health emergency. These data can be used to better disseminate key messages to the public.

Linguistic and communication exclusion in COVID-19 awareness campaigns in Malawi

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has unravelled the significance of having robust communication structures about health and disease to dynamic societies. The need to construct a mutual understanding of health issues has become imperative, and achieving a universal understanding of the disease burden requires robust information-sharing processes which can easily surmount the barriers to communication. What is challenging, however, is to communicate in a way and in a language that the majority of the population understands. In Malawi, where the majority of the population (84 per cent) live in rural areas, and without access to information technologies, it becomes more challenging when devising messages that should reach such hard-to-reach populations. This therefore begs the question: how effective is the COVID-19 communication to the Malawi public domain? This article attempts to answer this question by discussing the language choice vis-à-vis the lingua-cultural needs of the masses in COVID-19 awareness, and the strategies and modes of communication in COVID-19 communication. In view of this, the article argues that the government communication strategies concerning COVID-19 were not entirely effective. The article notes that the use of English in most of the COVID-19 messages has excluded the majority and has perpetuated the attitude of perceiving COVID-19 as a disease for the rich people. The modes being used in communicating COVID-19 do not effectively reach the masses since the media penetration is minimal resulting in most Malawians getting second-hand information and developing myths and conspiracy theories. The article concludes that it is imperative for Malawi to devise a contextually appropriate framework for communicating complex health messages.

The role of leadership among a Congolese community in Australia in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: a narrative study.

ObjectiveCommunity leadership enhances collective action in times of uncertainty, such as during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. This study explores the role of leadership related to the COVID-19 response and information sharing among a newly emerging Congolese community in the Hunter New England region of Australia.MethodsSemi-structured qualitative inquiry was used to interview four participants who were identified as being influential leaders of the local Congolese community. The findings of this study were part of a larger exploration of COVID-19 messaging among emerging culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities. Two interviewers independently analysed the transcribed data before pairing their findings. Narrative analysis was employed.ResultsTwo major themes were identified: leadership as an assigned and trusted role, and leadership as a continuous responsibility. Several categories were identified within these themes, such as mutual connection, education level, multilingual ability and networking.DiscussionThe Congolese community leaders reported feeling responsible and confident in their ability to proactively contribute to the local COVID-19 response by enhancing communication within the community. By partnering with and learning from respected leaders in CALD communities, government health services have the opportunity to improve how current public health messaging is developed.