Question

Find and review videoclips and articles involving press conferences or media releases about one of the following incidents: The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012; the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando in June 2016; the Las Vegas shootings of October 2017; or the ongoing Coronavirus/COVID-19 crisis. What is your assessment of those press conferences or media releases in terms of the content and tone of the messages or information, the skills and poise of those being interviewed or serving as spokespersons, the frequency of the crisis communications, and the media involved? What was done well, and what wasn’t? Were there any audiences or media that appeared to be overlooked?

Answer 1

Let's take example of covid19

Today I woke up to watch the Indian news channels beaming the address of Prime Minister Modi declaring a three-week lockdown throughout India starting March 25, to double our anxieties of over two-weeks shelter-in-place in our University of California, Berkeley apartments.

This three week's complete nationwide lockdown in India is quite praiseworthy and proactively aggressive step by the Government of India and states. However, the real challenge is to track and treat every affected person to nip the propagation of the viral infection in the bud.

In a country of more than 1.35 billion, tracking and treating each infected person requires robust public policy and its effective implementation which calls for action not only by governments, but also active participation of individuals and community.

What after three weeks?

More than 150 countries world over are struggling to find the ways and means to tackle this exponentially growing monster, while researchers and laboratories are busy finding the most effective combination of medicine and the all elusive vaccine. Public policy leaders are involved in formulating policies and ensuring implementation amidst ever-transforming scenario of this public health hazard. But the big question remains: what after social distancing of three weeks?

Leveraging the technology

Singapore is promoting use of a contact-tracing smartphone app, TraceTogether that helps local authorities track people exposed to confirmed cases of novel coronavirus. Coronainusa.com is also educating local citizens about confirmed, active, recovered, and death of Covid-19 cases in the US within 10, 30, and 60 miles of each zip code.
Covidvisualizer.com is also a simple and interactive website developed by Navid Mamoon and Gabriel Rasskin, two students of Carnegie Melon, to visualise the impact of Covid-19.

Social Media: the double-edged sword

Social media helps in conveying social messages effectively even to the person remotely placed. It is amazing to observe high level of awareness about Covid- 19 even among information asymmetrical rural folks.

However, the social media is also flooded with misleading information that is detrimental to society. It is observed that under the influence of social media, citizens are hoarding household goods, and provisions disproportionate to their needs, and some citizens are rushing to purchase anti-malarial drugs.

It is not unlikely that some of the anti-social elements may take this opportunity to disturb law and order too. As with my experience of working with the Election Commission of India, I should share that the social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook,etc. do share the origin of these misleading messages, and rumours, and they also suspend/block such accounts for limited or unlimited periods during model code of conduct.


The news agencies are continiously risking their life and providing the news to make people more aware of that.
If we open the news channel, out of 24 hours, today 20+ hours the news are about the corona Virus.
All the world news agencies are making people aware about the issue. How capitalism is failing, how hard core supporter of religion are not abiding to rules, How some democracies are able to manage like India and others are failing misrably like Pakistan, how good jaopan is doing and how Russia is testing too much,etc

In these kind of news many a time what authorities are facing and daily workers are facing is not shown properly. It seems they have been overlooked and their problems are shown deflatingly.