Understanding public health communication design globally during the Covid-19 pandemic : The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Tsekleves, Emmanuel and Fonseca Braga, Mariana and Moreno Rangel, Alejandro and Zhang, Linli and Salazar De La Fuente, Mafe and Field, Hannah and Alter, Hayley (2021) Understanding public health communication design globally during the Covid-19 pandemic : The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. In: Design Culture(s). Cumulus Conference Proceedings Roma 2021 :. Cumulus Conference Proceedings Series, 2 . Cumulus, pp. 2569-2593. ISBN 9789526490045

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Abstract

The aim of the study reported in this paper is to develop an understanding of official public health communication design on Covid-19 globally. As a new disease, the rapid rise in the sheer volume of new scientific information about Covid-19 surpasses human processing capabilities, impacting the public and policy makers, creating an ‘infodemic crisis’. Following a two-stage message/language framing and visual design analysis of crowdsourced official Covid-19 Public Health material we present findings from 46 countries, across five continents, and more in-depth analysis of 32 material from 17 countries. This is the first of its kind paper offering an analysis of the global situation on Covid-19 public health communication design; and six draft recommendations on how to effectively plan communication and frame messages that are compelling and actionable to the local audiences considering their social, cultural and economic circumstances.