How Autocrats Communicate Bad News: COVID-19 and Other Crises

Abstract

The global Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted massive discrepancies in governance around the globe. Not only do the practical measures to manage the public health crisis display large variation. Also, the communication strategies that governments employ differ markedly. Especially in autocracies, official discourse ranges from downplaying the severity of the crisis, spreading conspiracy theories or fake news, to justifying restrictions of fundamental rights. Official discourse on the Corona pandemic is a lens through which one can study the interplay of legitimation and repression in autocracies. The current pandemic is but one example where we can witness a broad variety of communication strategies. Natural disasters or societal challenges such as popular protests also trigger divergent framings by incumbents. Such phenomena have the potential to expose the incumbents’ weaknesses and challenge existing power relations. Therefore, political decisions for framing bad news in a certain way are not only informed by factual exigencies, but also reflect considerations of regime security, legitimacy, and the possibility for unrest. This is also true for communicating “bad news” that incumbent autocrats themselves have afflicted upon their citizens: political repression, be it against specific protests, targeted activists, or the population more broadly. Repression may be framed in certain ways, downplayed, or even denied. This panel investigates the interplay of political communication and crisis under authoritarianism. It sketches theoretical and conceptual approaches for studying the framing of challenging situations in autocracies and analyses empirical cases of political communication during the Covid-19 pandemic globally, in Africa, the Middle East, and China.

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