What should we be afraid of? Threat narratives in government crisis communication during COVID-19

The outset of the COVID-19 pandemic confronted the world with a crisis situation that was massive in scale, rapid in pace, and global in scope. In this situation, governments and heads of state used televised press conferences as instruments of political crisis communication, that is, to explain the nature of the crisis to the public and to announce measures on how to contain it. Although existing research has addressed different elements (e.g. metaphors) or instruments (e.g. Twitter), comparative research on the framing of the crisis is still scarce. In particular, little is known about how different states utilize threat narratives during crises as a means to ease the implementation of restrictive measures. With this paper, we fill this gap in the literature by answering the question of how institutional contexts as well as the pandemic development influence the use of threat narratives in crisis communication? We argue that the political system, the course of the pandemic, and the state of the national health system systematically impact the ways in which threats e.g. to (individual or collective) health, the economy, security, or liberty, are constituted in governments’ crisis communication. To test these propositions, we draw on a unique dataset of 1013 press conferences held by heads of government and states in 17 OECD countries in the first phase of the pandemic in early 2020. Combining different approaches of automated text analysis, we will identify rhetorical strategies and show how governments and heads of state adapt crisis communication over the course of the pandemic. The results will allow for a deeper understanding of the use of rhetorical strategies to define and instrumentalize the nature and severity of the threat a crisis poses, as well as the targeting of societal groups.