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- Volume 9, Issue 1, 2021
Journal of Visual Political Communication - COVID-19 Health Campaigns, Jun 2021
COVID-19 Health Campaigns, Jun 2021
- Editorial
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Health campaigns in an infodemic
More LessThe COVID-19 crisis is not only a pandemic, but also an infodemic. In the editorial for this Special Issue about health campaigns and COVID-19, we offer an overview of the context as well as of the three articles in the issue. This opening editorial focuses on the wider context within which the various campaigns took place. While the essays focus on the use of graphics and visual advertisements, we explore meme culture with special emphasis on character assassination, where memes are used to target accountability claims and engender distrust towards powerholders. Hence this presents a backdrop to the cultural and visual environment into which these responses to the global spread of COVID-19 entered.
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- Articles
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Feasibility of comics in health communication: Public responses to graphic medicine on Instagram during the COVID-19 pandemic
Authors: Xin Zhao, Anna Feigenbaum and Shannon McDavittThe COVID-19 pandemic has called for effective health communication strategies to better protect the public’s well-being, particularly over social media. Among various strategies, health-related comics, referred to as ‘graphic medicine’, were circulated on social media to communicate public health information and to share individuals’ struggles with mental health. Despite a growing body of research in the field of graphic medicine, studies on public responses to graphic medicine are rare, leaving a gap in understanding the feasibility of these comics for effective health communication over social media. To address this gap, this study focused on Instagram audience responses to graphic medicine posts related to the COVID-19 pandemic that were circulated on the platform. It used qualitative content analysis to study 334 comments on eleven comics related to mental health and 159 comments on ten comics related to vaccination. Findings evidence the feasibility of graphic medicine as a tool for health communication relating to showing empathy, contributing personal experiences and knowledge and understanding and elaborating on health-related knowledge, what we refer to as ‘health literacy’. Empirical implications of health communication through graphic medicine are discussed alongside the similarities and differences found in the comments relating to these two distinct COVID-19 issues.
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Information films as rhetorical responses during the COVID-19 crisis
Authors: Ragnhild Mølster and Jens E. KjeldsenDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, Norwegian health authorities provided citizens with advice, information about the disease and recommendations to take the COVID-19 vaccine. One of their tools was information videos shared on their official Facebook pages. Through the lens of the rhetorical situation, this article investigates these videos’ role as part of the Norwegian health authorities’ rhetorical response. During a constantly changing pandemic, governments continuously meet new challenges and must adjust their strategies. The various phases of the pandemic and the different rhetorical situations require different responses. We examine how the Norwegian health authorities use information videos to respond to these varying rhetorical situations during the COVID-19 pandemic and what characterizes their visual rhetoric. We show that during a lasting crisis such as the corona pandemic, different phases recur, allowing us to establish some general rhetorical situations. The responses to the situations are part of an ongoing process of rhetoric on the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analyses find that informative videos often use graphic imagery, are longer and use a direct address from authorities to citizen and thus serve a directive function. Persuasive videos are shorter, have less direct voice-over and tend to serve a more expressive function. Still, despite their variation in content and form, the videos share one type of main rhetorical strategy that we call invitation to appreciate. The main appeal in most of the videos is somewhere in-between deference and participation, or sometimes both at the same time. Instead of direct requests, they camouflage the direct appeal for compliance with the measures through filmic strategies in order not to compel acceptance but to invite appreciation. The videos present the citizens with scenarios and position them as apparently free to decide for themselves. In this way the rhetoric of the information films works as invitations to appreciate and adopt certain attitudes and behaviours.
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Shooting from the hip or taking careful aim? Developing the VISTA analytic framework comparing English and Scottish visual campaigns for self-protective behaviour throughout the COVID-19 pandemic
Authors: Audra Diers-Lawson, Grace Omondi and Sophie Louise HillierTo address the dearth of research in visual pandemic communication, this paper proposes the VISTA framework drawing together research from visual communication, persuasion, crisis communication, and health communication to propose that effective health crisis response includes minimizing visual complexity, using strong iconography and symbolism, and effective text to accompany the visual material. The framework was applied to a cross-national comparison of the English and Scottish governments’ COVID-19 pandemic response on Twitter finding that the framework’s application provides good evidence to explain the substantially worse health outcomes across the pandemic in England compared to Scotland. The authors argue the three critical lessons learned from this analysis are that governmental pandemic communication must: (1) use clear visual branding for its pandemic response; (2) combine effective visual and text-based messaging; and (3) keep pandemic messaging positive.
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- Book Reviews
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Through the Lens: The Pandemic and Black Lives Matter, Lauren Walsh (2022)
More LessReview of: Through the Lens: The Pandemic and Black Lives Matter, Lauren Walsh (2022)
New York and London: Routledge, 152 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-03218-615-3, p/bk, £18.99
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Paper. Pen. Pandemic: Viral Cartoons from around the Globe, Benevento Publishing (ed.) (2020)
Metaphors of Coronavirus: Invisible Enemy or Zombie Apocalypse?, Jonathan Charteris-Black (2021)By O. VigsøReview of: Paper. Pen. Pandemic: Viral Cartoons from around the Globe, Benevento Publishing (ed.) (2020)
Elsbethen: Benevento Publishing, 298 pp.,
ISBN 978-3-89955-012-2, h/bk, €28
Metaphors of Coronavirus: Invisible Enemy or Zombie Apocalypse?, Jonathan Charteris-Black (2021)
Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 301 pp.,
ISBN 978-3-03085-105-7, p/bk, €21.39
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