Reactions to the media coverage during the first wave of COVID-19 in Bangladesh

Samiun Nazrin Bente Kamal Tune · Md. Mehedi Hasan Sarkar · Md. Nasir Uddin · Md. Zakir Hossain Pinto · Syed Masud Ahmed

13 citations0/0 files storedHeliyon

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Communication and COVID-19 Impact Public Relations and Crisis Communication Risk Perception and Management

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The news media play a critical role in disseminating accurate and reliable information during an outbreak like COVID-19, especially in LMICs. Studying how people react and reflect on the information provided and how it affects their trust in health systems is essential for effective risk communication. This study was undertaken to explore and analyse newspaper readers' reactions to the unfolding news of the COVID-19 outbreak in Bangladesh and how this affected and shaped their compliance with the mitigation measures advised by the Government. METHODS: We collected readers' comments on relevant news and features on the COVID-19 outbreak (n = 1,055) which were posted in the online versions of the four top circulating Bangla newspapers and one online news portal published during Jan.-Apr. 2020. A search protocol was developed and a team of three researchers searched and extracted data for content analysis according to some pre-determined study themes. RESULTS: Data analysis revealed several characteristics with implications for risk-communication: a faith-based and fatalistic attitude to the unfolding pandemic, a "denial" syndrome in the initial stage, a returning expatriate-bashing for specific countries, and a concern about the safety of the frontline health workers. The readers were resentful of the all-pervasive corruption in the health sector even in times of a pandemic and the Government's poorly coordinated, fragmented, and delayed COVID-19 response. The pandemic severely shook their trust in the already weak health system and perceived it to be incompetent, corrupt, and non-responsive. They had deplorable personal and family experiences while seeking treatment for COVID-19 patients. Expert committees were formed to advise the Government, but few recommendations were implemented on the ground. This helpless scenario made people sharply critical of the political leadership, especially for the failure of providing stewardship at the moment of crisis. CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19 related information reaching the people, including misinformation, disinformation, and rumours was equivocal in the early months of the pandemic and failed to build the trust and transparency that is necessary for an inclusive response across constituencies. The Government should pay attention and weightage to people's perceptions about its COVID-19 response and take appropriate measures to re-build trust for implementing pandemic control measures.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 13 citations exist upstream.

References

2008Qualitative Content Analysis 2021What social media told us in the time of COVID-19: a scoping review 2004Qualitative Content Analysis 2013The Role of the Media in the Construction of Public Belief and Social Change 2020Role of Mass Media and Public Health Communications in the COVID-19 Pandemic 2016Qualitative Content Analysis 2020Strategic assessment of COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh: comparative lockdown scenario analysis, public perception, and management for sustainability 2020COVID-SCORE: A global survey to assess public perceptions of government responses to COVID-19 (COVID-SCORE-10)

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.