How to talk about COVID-19

Talking about COVID-19

We will get through this global pandemic best by working together. A long term collaborative, caring response will limit the spread, help us cope with the significant impacts, and mean we can emerge better than before.

Whether you are leading your organisation or community, working on the official response, or reporting on COVID-19 in the media, what and how you communicate about COVID-19 can help make sure that we all pull together. 

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This is an alarming time. There are real threats, many of them unpredictable, to our physical, social and economic wellbeing. Throughout this crisis, we are going to ask people to do challenging things: to stay calm, think of others first, and keep away from loved ones and friends in order to stay together as communities over the longer term.

The way we communicate during this crisis, and particularly the narratives we use, are powerful tools in encouraging and supporting this collective response to COVID-19. The best narratives will also help us come through this with our local and global communities better equipped than before to serve people and each other. 

However, the narratives used in crisis can also inadvertently exacerbate inequalities, and encourage antidemocratic behaviour and individualistic responses instead of community focussed responses. 

The Workshop has drawn on our own research and that of others to develop a guide to help you build your narratives about COVID-19 in ways that will encourage people to:

  1. respond collectively, putting caring for each other first, 

  2. understand more deeply the role that public institutions and collectives play in ensuring our shared wellbeing,

  3. engage in good decision-making based on a respect for best knowledge and science, and

  4. create better systems to cope with crises that are focussed on caring for people and the planet.

If you would like a copy of our COVID-19 message guide, please fill in the sign up form on this page. We are asking you to sign up to get the guide so we can get in touch to update you as our research and advice develops in these rapidly changing times.  You will also get regular emails with communication advice and real life examples of effective ways to talk about COVID-19.