Lecture: Analyzing Crisis Communication during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

A Case Study

This lecture presents results from a qualitative discourse-historical analysis of governmental crisis communication in Austria, Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, and New Zealand during the global lockdown from March 2020 to May 2020 and the transition phase to the relaxation of some restrictions over the summer of 2020.

By analysing a sample of important speeches and press conferences by government leaders (all performing as the “face of crisis management”), it is possible to deconstruct a range of strategies coping with the COVID-19 pandemic where everybody is in danger of falling ill, regardless of their status, position, education, and so forth. I focus on four frames that have been employed to mitigate the “dread of death” (Bauman 2006): a “religious frame”, a “dialogic frame”, a frame emphasizing “trust”, and a frame of “leading a war”. These interpretation frameworks are all embedded in “renationalizing” tendencies, specifically visible in the EU member states where even the Schengen area was suddenly abolished (in order to “keep the virus out”) and borders were closed. Thus, everybody was and continues to be confronted with national biopolitics and body politics (Wodak 2021) which have been legitimised in distinct ways. Thus, it seems as though everybody will have (to learn) to live with ever more uncertainty and fear for the near future.

Info

Day: 2021-11-17
Start time: 18:00
Duration: 01:00
Room: 👾
Track: Keynote
Language: en

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