Public Health Communication after COVID-19

Public health is often in the media - from debates about vaccine safety and how much people should drink during pregnancy, to the relationships between cancer and environment. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, public health research became headline news, as a critical factor in how health authorities responded, how governments balanced competing political imperatives, and how communities and individuals managed uncertainty. And it was not just research results that hit the headlines – citizens wanted to know how public health research works - from how statisticians model infection rates, to how epidemiologists work out risk factors, or how physicists work out how sneezes travel.

But increased media attention doesn’t necessarily lead to increased understanding, or to people being more willing to follow health guidelines. Science communication needs to be clear and accurate, but it is not a one-way street where experts deliver simple packets of information to an ignorant and trusting public. Rather, it is a complex and two-way process, where trust has to be built through transparency and dialogue, and where publics often know things about their own health that science doesn’t take into account. In the last twenty years, the advent of social media has massively increased opportunities for research communication, but has also brought its own challenges. How can we know who to trust online, and when images have been faked or AI-generated? How can we communicate with publics who distrust science in general? Should governments regulate ‘fake news’? How can we reach our audiences when there is an endless flow of appealing content?

Indeed, early in the pandemic the WHO declared that we were also entering an ‘infodemic’; an overwhelming flood of information, much of which is misleading or inaccurate. The impacts of this were all too clear – from protests and riots to people taking dangerous ‘cures’ – but the pandemic also generated a flood of inspiring new communication tools. From viral social media videos to snappy public health posters and accessible infographics.

This course will explore public health communication through concrete examples from COVID-19 and other public health issues, and connect the specific examples to wider debates about trust, scientific expertise, and knowledge in an era of 'fake news'. The course takes its starting point in the conviction that despite the challenges, public communication has the potential to support research and improve its social robustness.

The course will be structured around case studies spanning a range of media; e.g., news articles, online video talks, public health campaigns, cartoons, and museum exhibitions. Each example will be paired with relevant empirical or theoretical articles to guide our analysis. This is not a practical skills training course. Instead, the course helps students to use interdisciplinary literature to develop a reflective understanding of public communication that can then inform their future media work and interactions with other professionals in interdisciplinary public health contexts.