2. Blog posts
Liz Galvez Former Senior Diplomat with the UK and Commonwealth Office and Faculty Member of DiploFoundation
Public Diplomacy in the Time of Corona First published on DiploFoundation Blog, 6 April If ever there was a time for governments to get their communications right, it is now. Governments everywhere are under scrutiny for what they say, how accurately they report facts, and what actions they are proposing. COVID-19 is spreading faster than press offices can get their messages out. Thanks to the Internet, the media and members of the public are posting stories which may not show governments in their best light. People need to know will they get sick, will they receive the treatments they need, and will they lose their jobs, their homes, their lives. What they are getting instead are mixed messages. Governments are taking different approaches – serious lockdowns in Italy vs. business as usual in Sweden; all borders closed in Peru vs. an economy-ahead-of-quarantine approach in Brazil; wholescale testing in South Korea vs. travellers entering the UK from virus hotspots without so much as a swab or temperature check. There is little sign that governments are working collectively or consistently. Advice from the World Health Organization (WHO) secretary general is not heeded. Instead, we hear of front-line health workers in wealthy, developed countries still functioning without access to adequate protective clothing. We see footage of people sprayed with toxic detergent or beaten in the street because they are desperately looking for food for their families. We hear of emergency measures in Hungary which amount to the discarding of the democracy it fought to reinstate after 1989. These are images that will not easily be forgotten once the pandemic is over and countries try to repair their damaged reputation. Meanwhile, the myths continue to circulate on social media that the pandemic is a hoax, or just another flu, or that it can be cured by sunlight or sips of warm water. Why are people so ready to believe fake news? Does it reflect a basic mistrust of official messages, as Hugo Mercier of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) suggested? What can governments do to restore this possible loss of faith in officialdom? Public diplomacy is at the forefront of no one’s mind at the moment, but states will be judged in the future for their behaviour towards their own citizens and to one another, so perhaps the first step at this time of crisis is for states to stop the tit-for-tat blame-laying, to stop playing the propaganda game, and to seize the opportunity for collective action and making use of the new technologies available to us. Twenty years ago, it would
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