Health Crisis Communication

Multimodal Classification for Pandemic Preparedness
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-89863-6
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 192 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Reihe: Routledge Studies in Language, Health and Culture

Sheng-Hsun Lee develops a new way of understanding public health crisis communication through the lens of multimodal classification. He draws on examples from COVID-19 press conferences in Taiwan and public online comments to outline multimodal classification as sorting pandemic phenomena into categorical types.

Lee argues that when public health officials classify health crisis phenomena into categories, they also set parameters for official responses and shape public perceptions of a crisis. He illustrates the argument through examining Taiwan’s initial successes in keeping most infections at bay and subsequent challenges of obtaining enough vaccines for international border reopening. The successes and challenges are closely linked to multimodal classification, which includes using speech, gestures, and objects to make some categories travel broadly and impede the circulation of other categories. The book discusses a wide range of crisis categories from the three dreadful first times—the first confirmed case, the first community-acquired case, and the first death—to the politicized debate over vaccine brands. Lee emphasizes the importance of understanding how crisis categories are produced, circulated, and received. The comprehensive coverage looks beyond initial responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and outside English-dominant places to redefine effective public health messaging. Based on the findings, the book highlights implications for communicating official messages and offers a list of ready-to-use strategies for updating existing guidelines on public health communication.

The book is an essential read for public health practitioners and researchers and advanced students in discourse analysis and public health communication.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lee, Sheng-Hsun

Fachgebiete

• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Public Health, Gesundheitsmanagement, Gesundheitsökonomie, Gesundheitspolitik
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Soziolinguistik
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Kommunikationswissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction 2. The push and pull of COVID-19 classifications 3. Narrative classification 4. Numerical classification 5. Classification in mobility 6. Conclusion

Über Autor(innen)

Sheng-Hsun Lee is Lecturer in School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Queensland. He researches health communication and language acquisition. His research is published in international journals such as Applied Linguistics and Language in Society.