Moral Panic Frames Pandemic Response

Moral Panic Frames Pandemic Response

Establishing trust is vital to public health crisis communications. In examining Canadian pre-crisis risk communication through a framework of moral panic, in which the concept of implicatory denial is analyzed, Hier (2021) concludes that Canadian pre-crisis Covid-19 communication was lacking in cohesion, contradictory across multidimensional jurisdictions, and ultimately led to a broader public discourse of denial (p. 506) that “… failed to proportionately translate available knowledge of risk into the most effective and timely mitigation strategies” (p. 517). Hier (2021) examines the underreaction of government pre-crisis risk communication in the three months leading up to the pandemic’s acute phase, as a “form of implicatory denial” (p. 506), connecting infectious disease crisis communication to the “social, economic and political implications of underreacting to real-world threats” (p. 505).

The study of moral panic, states Hier (2021), is focused on agency that is characterized in debate. He describes three areas of needed study he utilizes to study Canadian political reactions and messaging in the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic: denial theory; social, economic, and political implications of disproportionate reactions to this real-world threat; and infectious disease crisis communication (p. 506).

Hier (2021) explains that pre-crisis risk communications are the official narratives communicated by officials to make sense of rapidly emerging diseases, and usually presented as “standardized claims about risk assessment, risk preparedness, and crisis planning” (p. 508). He (2021) notes uncertainty of Covid-19 crisis communications in Canada, specifically the official narratives that sought to reassure the public of a low likelihood of widespread infection, reiterated that Canadian leaders were in control, and attempted to proactively prevent panic, effectively contributing to the inability of Canadian and provincial authorities to act pre-emptively and collectively. “Instead (the dynamics of denial) manifested in the form of poor communication, mixed messaging, and contradiction across multi-jurisdictional claims-making domains” (p. 508).

In a qualitative analysis of news stories, health releases, speeches, and official briefings, the author considers the shifting and mixed messages that rhetorically illustrated hesitation of federal and provincial authorities in three phases of the first three months of the pandemic: January 1–25, 2020; Under-acknowledgement, January 26–March 4, 2020; Escalation and Reassurance, and March 5–31, 2020; Mixed Messaging and Contradiction. Through a narrative timeline, Hier (2021) analyzes the content of federal and selected provincial messages beginning in January 2020 and identifies Canadian health officials’ underestimation of the significance of the risks raised by the novel coronavirus. The communications of Canada’s Health Minister Patty Hadju, Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam, and British Columbia provincial health officer Bonnie Henry were examined. Hier determined all three reacted to quickly changing information about community transmission with inadequate travel restrictions while defending the efficacy with repeated reassurances that the risk of infection was low, and that the government was in control of the situation (pp. 509–510). ‘Escalation and reassurance’ of phase 2 began after Canada’s first presumptive case of Covid-19 was confirmed on January 26. Several cases had already been confirmed in the U.S (Hier, 2021, pp. 510–512).

Tam, and other public health officials, continued to downplay the risks of Covid-19, instead problematizing misinformation, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defending Canada’sstill-open border as late as March 5 (Hier, 2021, p. 510). The first Covid-19 related death on March 9, in British Columbia’s Lynn Valley Care Centre, marked the beginning of the third phase identified by Hier, Mixed Messaging and Contradiction (Hier, 2021, pp. 512–516). The World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11. Canada had 100 confirmed cases. Subsequent messaging became confusing, particularly among provincial officials and a range of contradictory messages across the country, as health officials downplayed the risk of infection by discouraging border closures and travel bans. The Canadian media began calling for more aggressive action. When the Canada-U.S. border was closed to non-essential travel on March 21, there were 1,330 confirmed and presumptive infections across Canada. The quarantine of passengers from the Grand Princess Hawaiian cruise ship contradicted the return of passengers at Canadian airports, from some of the worst-affected regions of the world, with little or no screening. Such contradictions “…in the absence of national and provincial responses created confusion, exacerbated mixed messaging, and threatened to undermine trust in public health claims making” (Hier, 2021, p. 514).

By socially constructing risk conditions through emotional, psychological, social, cultural, and normative claims and frames, as much as they rationally and scientifically responded to the objective dimensions of viral behaviour, Canadian and provincial public health claims makers disproportionately translated available knowledge of risk into the most effective and timely mitigation strategies. Hier’s research highlights the need for cohesion and cooperation in pre-risk crisis communications among national and subnational (provincial) governments. Hier describes three types of content denial: literal, interpretive, and implicatory denial. All three may prompt investigation from a standpoint that harm has been done, connects this current research, and frame Covid-19 messaging from Alberta’s premier and CMOH, specifically the “rhetorical deflection, strategic framing, and political spin” (Hier, 2021, p. 508) utilized by provincial officials in their rationalizing and repackaging of Alberta Covid-19 measures in implicatory denial. Very little research has been conducted on subnational or provincial communication strategies utilized to convey risks and preventative measures during Covid-19, but the opportunity to study such messaging as the pandemic continues, with Alberta’s health system on the verge of collapse, is an opportunity to proactively inform future strategy.