Political Communication in the Time of Coronavirus

This book examines how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the flows of communication between politicians, journalists, and citizens.

Distinguished contributors grapple with how the pandemic, as a global unexpected event, disrupted the communication process and changed the relationships between politics, media, and publics, the three central players of political communication. Using different methodologies, they scrutinize changes in government communication, (new) media coverage, and public opinion during this crisis. The book moves beyond the USA and Western Europe to include cases from Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia, taking into account how variations in the political context, the media system and personal leadership can influence how the COVID-19 pandemic challenged the political communication process.

It is an ideal text for advanced students and scholars of political communication, political science, and media studies.

Chapter 13 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com.

"This book offers a rich trove of empirical data and theoretical arguments from around the world that will help understand further multiple communication and political aspects of the pandemic. I am particularly struck by the sophistication of the analysis and the impressive efforts to analyze the effective and botched responses to the pandemic as shaped by communicative processes, choices and styles by governments. Peter Van Aelst and the late great Jay Blumler have assembled a formidable collection that yields novel insights into classic political communication questions - polarization, government communication, elite cues, leadership, and public trust."?Silvio Waisbord, Director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University