Precede: Proceed Model for Health Communication – An Analysis of COVID Coverage in Indian Newspapers

Introduction

When the news of the COVID-19 outbreak in China slowly started trickling out, it seemed a distant reality that the coronavirus would be a pandemic, affecting millions across the world. However, a few months down the line, the situation had drastically changed. Covid-19, named so by the World Health Organization on February 11^th, 2020 was declared a pandemic on March 11^th, 2020 and as of on 28^th June 2020, Covid-19 had claimed 495,388 lives across the world. (World Health Organization, 2020; WHO Covid-19 Dashboard, 2020; Covid-19 India Timeline, 2020).

World witnessed an unprecedented scenario, a continuously evolving situation which presented its own set of challenges. Here, the relevance of mass media was reinforced again. When ‘shelter in place’ restrictions across the world put people in isolation, the media was not only a source of information, but most importantly a source of emotional wellbeing. Nevertheless, one of the most crucial challenges that a pandemic presents is attitude and behaviour modification. The challenge of behaviour modification is further compounded by the panic that can grip the masses when they are devoid of authentic, credible, and persuasive communication and media has the potential to bridge the gap between people and credible information.

Mass media is responsible for persuasive health communication, affecting attitude and behaviour change. In fact, mass media has always been an appealing method to disseminate information regarding health, thereby preventing social and health problems (Wallack, 1981). Media educates about health and achieves health goals, while emphasizing old messages to sustain changes in health. It can also acquaint people with health behaviour change products and services. (Flora, Maibach, & Maccoby, 1989). Mass media’s relevance during a pandemic is amplified, taking into consideration that masses need to be informed about the ongoing developments, infection rate, precautions to be taken to prevent the illness/disease etc and media can help put a specific health issue in the nation's agenda. (Institute of Medicine, US, 2002).

Out of all the mass media, T.V. is the least specialized medium when it comes to satisfying any personal or political needs. However, newspaper is the most specialized medium for integration into sociopolitical order (Katz, Hass & Gurevitch, 1973) Newspapers might not be the mainstream media anymore due to ever diminishing resources, but these remain a keystone media providing not only important information but also enabling coverage in other mediums, having ‘ecological consequences’ (Nielsen, 2015). Similarly, Heyd (2012) also points out that newspapers have not only provided relevant and immediate information, but have also been known to influence the perception of the readers and ‘shape historical memory’.

In India, mass media like T.V., and the internet, though a popular, accessible and effective medium for health communication; are wrought with the issues of fake news and disinformation. According to a Microsoft study (2019) 64% Indians encountered fake news online, which was the highest among the 22 countries that were surveyed (Popat & Popat, 2020). Television though more credible than the internet struggles with Television Rating Point (TRP) conundrum. Hence, it is quite easy for the audience to discredit audio-visual sources like T.V. and the internet. Further, radio, though with its continued evolution in India (Thomas, 2019) can be quite difficult to relate with. However, newspapers with its written word credibility, remain one of the most important channels of communication and especially so during a pandemic (Newspapers’ role in the time of coronavirus, 2020). Relevance of newspapers in India can be highlighted with the fact that there were 17,573 registered newspapers in India as of 31st March, 2018 (Prakash, 2020). Further, in addition to Hindi and English, India has newspapers in 14 vernacular languages. These numbers and meticulously fact checked information by editors at various levels underscore the importance of newspapers. Consequently, it was only relevant to evaluate the COVID-19 coverage in newspapers.