Thread by @HeidiTworek

A thread: Communications in a public health crisis are as crucial as medical intervention. in fact, communications policies ARE a medical intervention.

We can do much better so here goes: (1/25)

Who should speak?

Public health officials, doctors, and nurses are amongst the most trusted people everywhere. Use them to spread messages. I'd like to see more nurses talking. Politicians should introduce them to give them a higher profile. Then get out of the way. (2/25)

When should they speak?

To start - daily press conferences. I'm seeing this pretty much everywhere. (actually these are less important than politicians think. I'll get to that.)

Problem: fancy new terms like "social distancing" over-complicate things. Explain simply! (3/25)

Also, practice what you preach. Trump held a press conference telling people not to gather in groups of more than 10. Number of people at his announcement - 16.

FINALLY, I see people at Canadian press conferences today staying two arms' lengths away from each other (4/25)

Even better than pressers live - hold them virtually. SHOW people, don't just TELL people. Otherwise they will wonder. Why can THEY still go out, but I can't? (5/25)

If you're going to stick with press conferences, let your citizens tweet in questions live. Open yourself up to understanding your citizens' anxieties and not just answering journalists.

BUT honestly, press conferences are being over-used.

Here is what we really need: (6/25)

First the problems:

Problem 1: many target groups will never listen to a press conference and may read little news.

Problem 2: it's REALLY hard to change people's actions through communication. We over-estimate effects all the time.

Problem 3: people are anxious. (7/25)

Problem 4: people have very little time as they deal with kids, caring for the sick etc.

Problem 5: trust in politicians, many news outlets, and social media are all very low. Different levels in different countries, but no country's citizens all trust the same sources. (8/25)

I could keep going with the problems but you get the general idea. On to solutions:

What type of information do we need?

Public health authorities need to create or use simple graphics with instructions. e.g. on hand-washing from WHO here (9/25)

Write short articles and posts with bullet points on what to do. We already know that many people barely read past headlines of newspaper articles. The best e-mails are around 150 words.

Keep anything written clear, lots of space on the page, and good graphics (10/25)

Pairing visuals with text really helps. "Dual-coding" theories of cognition say we remember better when we receive information from two independent, but inter-connected channels (visual and audio, for example.) Even better - videos with audio and subtitles. (11/25)

Diagrams like flow charts, timelines, Venn diagrams are more memorable than bar charts, graphs, maps, tables.

Include colours. Include easily-recognizable distinct objects like people, animals, cars.

For the science, see e.g. sciencedirect.com/science/articl… (12/25)

So types of graphics and presentation REALLY matter. Weirdly, governments and international organizations use diagrams very rarely compared to media. (see ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24051797)

Big disconnect b/ the trusted public health authorities and how they communicate! (13/25)

I can't emphasize this enough - be honest! Tell people what we do and don't know. Much panic stems from fears that officials are hiding something. That's an atmosphere where rumours flourish.

Present clear, transparent statistics, e.g. Singapore co.vid19.sg (14/25)

Create different materials for different channels - threads for Twitter, posts for Facebook, videos for YouTube, TikTok videos, all delivering similar messages in different ways. This is obviously labour-intensive and requires some skill to avoid looking ridiculous. SO (15/25)

Who should create the info and how should they disseminate it?

Public health authorities in Canada have $50mill for public education. Same in many other places. Hire young people who know how to use social media! They can do so much better than us. Trust their skills. (16/25)

Hire some journalists, video editors, graphic designers. Recognize that the old methods don't work that well and never did. Be willing to ask excellent communicators who don't necessarily know anything about health. (17/25)

Celebrities have been key to raising awareness. Tom Hanks and Idris Elba contracting coronavirus made more people care. Elba's video announcing his diagnosis got 32.8 million views on Twitter. CDC videos are getting over 500,000, if they are lucky (18/25)

Jürgen Klopp telling people to listen to health experts, not him, is also a great message.

Compile a wish list of celebrities in sport, music, film, comedy, etc. and social media influencers for different demographics. Get them info so they can communicate to fans (19/25)

Other keys - employers, brands. Everyone is getting dozens of e-mails a day from companies about COVID-19. Why not write some boilerplate health advice for them to include? Or a simple graphic to distribute. (20/25)

If you have public broadcasters - get them to do PSAs every 30 or 60 minutes. If you don't, ask private channels to air ads for free, offer a discount, or just pay.

Ask Netflix & streaming services to include a PSA at the start of every show.

Newspaper ads - why not? (21/25)

Do you have access to a text message system? Use it to update people. Panic flourishes in a vacuum.

Daily updates are reassuring, not frightening. South Korea did this: thediplomat.com/2020/03/lesson… (22/25)

Work with social media companies. They are doing better than in the past. But still lots of problems and this may get worse as they rely more on AI to keep content moderators at home (vox.com/recode/2020/3/…) (23/25)

We could ask for, e.g.:

A box on landing pages with graphics/links to the CDC or other health authority.

Amplify trusted voices, as Google is doing with YouTube.

A real crackdown on fraudulent ads and price gouging. (24/25)

Communications will only go so far but really can help and save lives if we do it well.

I'll do other threads over the coming days with more tips. In the meantime, happy to speak with any officials who want advice. Just DM or e-mail me. (25/25)

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