COVID Communication: Exploring Pandemic Discourse

This book focuses on how we understand COVID-19―medically, socially, and rhetorically. Given the expectation that other flu pandemics will occur, it stresses the importance of examining how the public response is shaped in the face of global health emergencies. It considers questions such as how can pandemic language both limit and expand our understanding of disease as biomedical, social, and experiential? In what ways can health communication be improved through the study and application of rhetoric and the health humanities? COVID Communication fills a gap in the pandemic literature by promoting interdisciplinary analysis of communication methods, realized through a health humanities approach. It centers human experience and culture within conversations about the biological reality of a pandemic. This volume will be a welcome contribution to the scientific investigations and practice of psychology and public health professionals.

• Interdisciplinary perspective
• New insights on how a pandemic is understood
• Highlights the relevance to important usually neglected relevance for psychology and public health professionals

Endorsements of COVID Communication 

• “In an era of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, COVID Communication provides a smart, urgent alternative to our collective downward spiral, not only offering a fiery critique of our selfish and self-destructive present but also providing galvanizing, positive visions of what futures we might hope for.” ― Shailendra Saxena, King George’s Medical University, India; editor of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): Epidemiology, Pathogenesis, Diagnosis, and Therapeutics 
• “COVID Communication shows that the pandemic affects us not only because it makes us sick or ruins our economy, but also because of howit is spoken, written, and thought about, ultimately because of how it is socially constructed. An original and very necessary look to arm ourselves intellectually against the pandemic.” ― Alberto del Campo Tejedor, Pablo de Olavide University, Spain; author of La infame fama del andaluz  
• “The COVID-19 pandemic represented a global challenge that needed nations and their people to come together, find a joint response, and build a narrative that was clear, consistent, inclusive, and respectful of people. The reality, however, is that the responses to the pandemic reflected the ideologies of national leaders, political leaders, media outlets, and activists, leading to a fragmented and at times polarized global discourse. This important work examines the different narratives that circulated within the information environment to explore how these may have led to differing levels of trust in politicians, in science, and in one another. Through an analysis of rhetoric across diverse nations and platforms, the chapters provide a framework that is crucial for understanding the interplay between discourse, cognition, and behavior.” ― Darren Lilleker, Bournemouth University, UK; co-editor of Political Communication and COVID-19: Governance and Rhetoric in Times of Crisis
• “This book presents a collection of must-read scholarly chapters that illustrate a panoramic view of how people from different countries and cultures communicate about this global pandemic.  These chapters paint a rich canvas of thoughts, emotions, reactions, and actions through communication expressions, ranging from intuitive rhetoric and probing cartoons to emotional memes and creative advertising.  The book is a great resource for aiding health communication scholars, instructors, professionals, journalists, and students in enhancing their COVID-19 research, teaching, practice, reporting, and learning.” ― Carolyn A. Lin, University of Connecticut, USA; co-editor of Communication Technology and Social Change: Theory and Implications
• “In an era of cultural anxiety caused by the global pandemic and social unrest, COVID Communication could not be timelier. Presenting broad cross-cultural and multi-modal perspectives on media portrayals of the illness that has caused so much suffering and uncertainty, this insightful book offers a ‘rhetorical toolkit’ that gives us tools to navigate the maze of modern communication with a deeper understanding of the power of language in the time of social media. It is a perfect resource for classes on media literacy, while it is useful to anyone who wants to become a more active, independent, and secure consumer of the media in the age of information abundance.” ― Katja Plemenitaš,University of Maribor, Slovenia; co-author of Josip Hutter and the Dwelling Culture of Maribor 
• “COVID-19, as a disaster and series of converging crises, has forever shaped society. COVID Communication offers an easy-to-read, unparalleled academic-practitioner focus to help understand the cultural, social, economic, political, community health, and personal risk assessment aspects of communication during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, in a ground- breaking analysis that enhances the rich intellectual tradition of the field of communications, each chapter in COVID Communication offers readers the opportunity to view multiple media sources and approaches that engender a deeper understanding of health information and communication during and after COVID-19 and its ensuing crises.” ― DeMond S. Miller, Rowan University, USA; co-editor of Community Disaster Recovery and Resiliency: Exploring Global Opportunities and Challenges
• “With its twenty-one chapters exploring a wide spectrum of issues ranging from individual and social responses to the global coronavirus breakout to the divergent narrative patterns identified from various countries, COVID Communication is indeed a timely and significant guide to understanding the recent pandemic. The collection makes the reader realize and acknowledge the multitude of complex, intersecting factors and processes that are relevant to comprehend the coronavirus pandemic and to cope with its various representations.”  ― Şemsettin Tabur, Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University, Turkey; author of Contested Spaces in Contemporary North American Novels: Reading for Space 

Douglas A. Vakoch (PhD, MA, Stony Brook University; MA, University of Notre Dame; BA, Carleton College) is President of METI International and Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He has edited or co-edited more than twenty books covering COVID-19, communication, psychology, sustainability, and the search for life beyond Earth, including COVID-19 in International Media: Global Pandemic Perspectives (Routledge, 2022), Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope: Experiencing the Twin Disasters of COVID-19 and Climate Change (Springer, 2022), and Eco-Anxiety and Pandemic Distress: Psychological Perspectives on Resilience and Interconnectedness (Oxford University Press, 2023). His work has been featured in such publications as The New York Times, The Economist, Nature, and Science, and he has been interviewed for numerous radio and television programs, including those broadcast on theBBC, PBS, Netflix, and Bilibili.

John C. Pollock (PhD, Stanford; MPA, Maxwell School, Syracuse; BA, Swarthmore), is Professor, depts. of Communication Studies and Public Health, The College of New Jersey. Authored or edited books include Tilted Mirrors: Media Alignment with Political and Social Change – A Community Structure Approach (2007); Media and Social Inequality: Innovations in Community Structure Research (2013); Journalism and Human Rights: How Demographics Drive Media Coverage (2015); (with Mort Winston), Making Human Rights News: Balancing Participation and Professionalism (2017); and (with Douglas A. Vakoch), COVID-19 in International Media: Global Pandemic Perspectives (Routledge (2021) . Serving on several editorial boards, including Journal of Health Communication, Communication Theory, and Mass Communication and Society, Pollock has written articles for numerous scholarly and non-scholarly outlets, including Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Health Communication, Mass Communication and Society, Journal of Human Rights, Human Rights Review, Society, The Nation, and The New York Times. Former president of a leading public relations firm’s public opinion research subsidiary, Pollock won a Silver Anvil, “Oscar” of the Public Relations Society of America. With grants from the Social Science Research Council, National Cancer Institute, United Nations Foundation, and Senior Fulbright Scholar (Argentina, 2010), Pollock advances community structure theory, exploring the impact of society on media.

Amanda M. Caleb (PhD, MA, The University of Sheffield; MPH, The University of Alabama at Birmingham; BA, Davidson College) is Professor of Medical Humanities, having previously served as founding director and Professor of Medical and Health Humanities and Professor of English at Misericordia University. Her research interests include the medical and public health humanities, health communication, health narratology, narrative medicine, and bioethics and the Holocaust. Dr. Caleb has published articles and book chapters on topics ranging from the medicalization of social policies to the marginalization of people with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic to dementia and the role of narrative medicine. She is a member of the Health Humanities Consortium Steering Committee (membership chair), a member of the executive committee of the Medical Humanities and Health Studies forum of the Modern Language Association, and a member of the steering committee for the Department of Bioethics and the Holocaust, International Chair of Bioethics (World Medical Association Cooperation Centre). Dr. Caleb was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant to revise Misericordia University’s Medical and Health Humanities curriculum; as part of second NEH grant, she developed two public health humanities projects: COVID-19 and the Humanities YouTube lecture series, and a podcast, The Health Humanist.