Abstract

LOPES, Felisbela; ARAUJO, Rita  and  MAGALHAES, Olga. Covid-19: A Pandemic Managed by Official Sources Through Political Communication. Comunicação e Sociedade [online]. 2021, vol.40, pp.17-32.  Epub Dec 20, 2021. ISSN 1645-2089.  https://doi.org/10.17231/comsoc.40(2021).3520.

SARS-CoV-2 pandemic attracted a wide range of expert sources into journalism, especially those from the health field. Nonetheless, official sources (mainly politicians) did not become less visible. They were mainly decision-makers, even though decisions were not always well-communicated, which promoted entropy. Worldwide, countries adopted different strategies, some undergoing severe lockdowns and others rejecting restrictive measures - and that was often difficult to understand. The management of this pandemic was hard, not only due to the lack of technical knowledge but also due to the lack of cooperation and coordination amongst several stakeholders, such as governments, health authorities, or experts. In this research, we seek to understand the role of official sources in the Portuguese press during the emergency states. In order to do so, we analyzed two national newspapers, a reference newspaper (Público) and a mainstream newspaper (Jornal de Notícias) from March 18 to May 2, 2020, and from November 9 to December 23, 2020. Our corpus comprises 2.307 news pieces: 1.850 were published during the first emergency state, quoting 4.048 news sources, and 457 were published during the second emergency state, with 857 sources. We realized that official news sources are highly visible in the news, especially those from the government, such as the prime minister and a few other ministers. Although evidence recommends the appointment of an official spokesperson, that did not happen in Portugal, and it may have contributed to some lapses throughout 2020. By the end of the year, the country had an increase in covid-19 cases, and the hesitancy that characterized political decisions was also behind that.

Keywords : covid-19; journalism; official news sources; health communication.

        · abstract in Portuguese     · text in English | Portuguese     · English ( pdf ) | Portuguese ( pdf )