The language of crisis: spatiotemporal effects of COVID-19 pandemic dynamics on health crisis communications by political leaders.

ABSTRACT: In times of crisis, communication by leaders is essential for mobilizing an effective public response. During the COVID-19 pandemic, compliance with public health guidelines has been critical for the prevention of infections and deaths. We assembled a corpus of over 1500 pandemic-related speeches, containing over 4 million words, delivered by all 50 US state governors during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed the semantic, grammatical and linguistic-complexity properties of these speeches, and examined their relationships to COVID-19 case rates over space and time. We found that as COVID-19 cases rose, governors used stricter language to issue guidance, employed greater negation to defend their actions and highlight prevailing uncertainty, and used more extreme descri

SUBMITTER: Mandl BJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8748550 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature