Available via license: CC BY 4.0
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TYPE Editorial
PUBLISHED 26 April 2023
DOI 10.3389/fcomm.2023.1196680
OPEN ACCESS
EDITED AND REVIEWED BY
J. Brian Houston,
University of Missouri, United States
*CORRESPONDENCE
Nova Ahmed
nova.ahmed@northsouth.edu
RECEIVED 30 March 2023
ACCEPTED 12 April 2023
PUBLISHED 26 April 2023
CITATION
Ahmed N, McKinnon M, Onyige CD and
Yokoyama HM (2023) Editorial: Science
communication in dicult times: the
intersectionality of science communication and
risk communication during disasters and crises.
Front. Commun. 8:1196680.
doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2023.1196680
COPYRIGHT
©2023 Ahmed, McKinnon, Onyige and
Yokoyama. This is an open-access article
distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use,
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No use, distribution or reproduction is
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Editorial: Science communication
in dicult times: the
intersectionality of science
communication and risk
communication during disasters
and crises
Nova Ahmed1*, Merryn McKinnon2, Chioma Daisy Onyige3and
Hiromi M. Yokoyama4,5
1Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, North South University, Dhaka, Bangladesh,
2Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University,
Canberra, ACT, Australia, 3Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, University of Bonn, Bonn,
North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, 4Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The
University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Japan, 5Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, The
University of Tokyo, Chiba, Japan
KEYWORDS
science communication, risk communication, intersectionality, disasters, crises
Editorial on the Research Topic
Science communication in dicult times: the intersectionality of science
communication and risk communication during disasters and crises
The ability of humankind to solve problems and adapt to changing circumstances is key
to our long-term survival. Locally, nationally and globally we face a myriad of problems, yet
the impacts of many of these are disproportionately felt, such as climate change (Mearns and
Norton, 2010) and pandemics (Tai et al., 2021). Science communication has an important
role to play in modern societies (Davies, 2021), from fighting misinformation (Goldstein
et al., 2020) to helping engage diverse stakeholders (Weingart and Joubert, 2019), defining
and addressing problems and implementing solutions. Science communication, and those
who work within it, thus have roles as brokers of knowledge.
Knowledge is a resource, but one that is not always distributed evenly (Medvecky, 2018).
This can have ethical implications (Dahlstrom and Ho, 2012) as how well communities can
prepare for, endure, or recover after times of difficulty or crisis can often be influenced by
the information and perspectives that are used to define both the problem and the potential
solutions. Yet those defining the problems and formulating the solutions are typically
not those most acutely affected. For example, the COVID pandemic has highlighted how
women, minority groups and those in developing countries bear a much higher burden as a
consequence of reduced access to support and resources (Benski et al., 2020;Ho and Dascalu,
2020;Medeiros et al., 2023). Similarly, the impacts of climate change, such as bushfires and
intense tropical storms, disproportionately affect those who already have less, compounding
their disadvantage. Failing to recognize the impact of intersectionality on communities
during times of challenge or crisis, or even just in day-to-day living, means that sometimes
solutions serve only to widen pre-existing gaps. This Research Topic includes five articles
exploring how countries, typically not well-represented in the academic literature, responded
to challenges or crises and the different science and risk communication strategies they used.
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Ahmed et al. 10.3389/fcomm.2023.1196680
Nabavi’s paper presents the difficulties of communication
during a water crisis in Iran. He discusses the inherent challenges
of effectively communicating with a multitude of stakeholders—the
decision makers, those impacted by the problem and the experts—
within a situation exacerbated by the uncertainty, fear and urgency
of the public. Current governance, power dynamics, scholarly
dominance and other regional factors influence who has the
power and agency to participate in decision-making. Consequently,
this privileges some knowledge perspectives, such as engineering,
over other academic disciplines and sources such as indigenous
knowledge of water systems and customs. This work discusses how
co-production can be used productively to widen participation in
water governance.
Cagayan et al. explore the COVID-19 vaccination of pregnant
women in the Philippines. Pregnant women were excluded
from vaccination until the Delta variant arrived, creating
urgency to protect them, requiring improved communication
across this community. Despite authority-led recommendations
from the Department of Health for pregnant and lactating
mothers to be vaccinated, many did not come forward to
receive it; the initial vaccination rate of this group was 19%.
There were concerns about the adequacy of the vaccination
communication which was affected by social disparities. Cagayan
et al.’s paper describes a communication campaign which was
designed to overcome these difficulties, using visual infographic
and video based information on social media platforms. The
communication messages were simple, clear and gender balanced.
Despite being used by publics as well as health authorities,
concerns remain around the ability to reach all communities via
this approach.
The Yokoyama and Ikkatai paper measures and compares
trust in experts and trust in government in 2020 and 2022
in Japan. The authors found there was no change in trust in
experts, which was maintained at a relatively high level, but
ruling party supporters trust experts more than opposition
party supporters. This may be because ruling party politicians
are receiving expert advice. In other words, rather than
the content of the advice, it seems possible that trust may
depend on the viewpoint of whether the advice is useful for
the ruling party’s politics, communication itself, and what
one believes.
Risk communication is an essential component by governments
and agencies globally to curtail the spread and devastating
effects arising from COVID-19. An understanding of the
effectiveness of the national risk communication strategy is
key in generating effective solutions in the future. In a study
conducted in Nigeria, Lawal showed that public attention
peaked at the beginning of the pandemic when there was a
stringent nationwide lockdown imposed by the government, but
there was considerable decline in safety adherence afterwards
despite increasing new cases. The results indicated that the
risk communication efforts were inadequate in providing a
prolonged health behavioral change. The evidence suggests
that risk perception may have been poorly targeted by risk
communication interventions.
The final paper also considers risk communication during
COVID-19 in the context of Bangladesh. Ahmed et al. show,
through their qualitative study, how risk communication during
the pandemic was unable to effectively reach marginalized
and low income communities. Interestingly, rural communities
were connected to local governance and support groups and
received certain information while urban low income, low
literate communities were beyond the reach of such support
systems. Participants who had formal or semi-formal jobs such
as working in a ready-made garment factory or in a household
were connected to authority or personnel who could provide
them with some level of information about the pandemic.
However, community members with small scale or informal
businesses were not connected to any authority body and
remained disconnected from information sources, compounding
disadvantage. Social prejudice also negatively affected socially
marginal participants such as widows living with small children.
The major challenges arose from the traditional top down
approach of risk communication where the authority made
the communication strategy and decisions without knowing the
challenges of the general population.
The work presented in this Research Topic shows examples,
predominantly from Asia, where marginalized communities
are impacted most. Despite illustrating that there is a lot of
work and effort to design and develop effective communication
mechanisms that include them, marginalized communities
are still most likely to face barriers to accessing and receiving
information, including barriers created by social prejudice.
The articles also show how the general populations may
perceive authorities as untrustworthy and lacking compassion,
undermining the legitimacy of the information shared.
Collaborative approaches to communication can influence
these perceptions, and may go some way to overcoming
these barriers.
Author contributions
NA wrote the first draft of the manuscript. MM, CO,
and HY wrote sections of the manuscript. All authors
contributed to manuscript revision, read, and approved the
submitted version.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the
absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be
construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those
of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of
their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher,
the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be
evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by
its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the
publisher.
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Ahmed et al. 10.3389/fcomm.2023.1196680
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