COVID-19 COMMUNICATION RESEARCH


A research on COVID-19 related
communications by different social actors
and their impact on general public’s
attitudes and behaviours


Introduction

When there is a pandemic, such as the COVID-19, which can spread quickly from human to human, consequences for public health and societies are enormous. Communication plays an important role in risk and crisis management.

Under the title “COVID-19 Communication Research” a team of researchers led by Professor Chiara Valentini (Corporate Communications, JSBE) is investigating different issues pertaining COVID-19 related communications by different social actors, such as governments, news media, health authorities, experts, business organizations, and their impact on general public’ attitudes and behaviours.

The team from Jyväskylä School of Business and Economics, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, is currently working with leading researchers in USA, Italy and South Korea to answer different questions about the type of COVID-19 communication that has been circulating since the beginning of the pandemics, the social actors involved in those communications, the main crisis narratives and perspectives presented as well as the public perceptions of these social actors and their willingness to comply with different preventive behaviours.

Both qualitative and quantitative data is collected and compared across six countries (Finland, Sweden, Italy, South Korea, USA and Australia). The JSBE team is part of the EUPRERA Comm-COVID network led by Professor Angeles Moreno, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain, and is contributing with data from Finland to this global study. More info: https://euprera.org/what-we-do/member-networks/com-covid/