The COVID-19 pandemic has been a main focus of news coverage worldwide since the virus was first reported in December 2019, including the evolution of scientific knowledge about the virus. News coverage of diseases is also associated with public perception of the severity and prevalence of the risk. News media are a dominant source of health information for the general public and most people learn about novel health threats through reading the news. We examine how Canadian newspapers communicated scientific uncertainty in their initial coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and how journalists – both health reporters and those who do not usually cover health and science topics – made sense of the scientific process.
News media and commentators analysed the successes and failures of the pandemic response in real-time, bringing the process of scientific inquiry, which is also fraught with uncertainty, onto the public agenda. Scientific research, risk management policy decisions, and risk communication happened simultaneously. As new evidence emerged, policies and guidelines were frequently revised and communicated to the population, emphasizing that uncertainty. uncertainty about the validity of claims based on scientific evidence or claims communicated by scientists. With no prior knowledge nor immunity against the novel coronavirus, public health authorities grappled with uncertainty, i.e. As elected officials and public health authorities struggled to contain the spread, scientists worldwide raced to understand the transmission and symptoms of the illness and develop a vaccine. The disease, caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, prompted a rapid public health response that included forced lockdowns for several weeks across Canada. In late January 2020, Canada identified its first case of COVID-19, a respiratory disease that was quickly becoming a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). More care and effort are needed in these communication engagements to minimize inconsistencies, uncertainty, and politicization. Finally, public health communicators should be aware of and more responsive to a variety of media reporters, who will bring different interpretative frames to their reporting.
Public health officials should quickly engage in communication course corrections if original messages are missing the intended mark, and clearly explain the shift. Public health officials and political leaders need to provide clear and consistent messages and access to data regarding infection prevention guidelines. Managing scientific uncertainty in evolving science-policy situations requires timely and clear communication. While specialist journalists understood that scientific knowledge evolves and the process is fraught with uncertainty, non-specialist reporters and commentators expressed frustration over changing public health guidelines, leading to the politicization of the pandemic response and condemnation of elected officials’ decisions. Uncertainty emerged as a “master frame” across the sample, and four additional framing strategies were used by reporters and commentators when covering the pandemic: (1), evidence -focusing on presence or absence of it- (2) transparency and leadership -focusing on the pandemic response- (3) duelling experts – highlighting disagreement among experts or criticizing public health decisions for not adhering to expert recommendations- and (4) mixed messaging -criticizing public health communication efforts. Second, we compared how specialist health and science reporters discussed scientific evidence versus non-specialist reporters in hard news and columns. Using a qualitative analysis software, our analysis focused, first, on how scientific uncertainty was framed in hard news and opinion discourse (editorial, op-ed).
We conducted a framing analysis of 1143 news stories and opinion during the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine how Canadian newspapers framed scientific uncertainty in their initial coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and how journalists made sense of the scientific process. The COVID-19 pandemic brought the production of scientific knowledge onto the public agenda in real-time.
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