Abstract
The rampant spread of COVID-19 has created a catastrophic surge of pandemic pandemonium, with many countries unprepared and under-resourced to address this global public health crisis. At the onset of the pandemic, COVID-19 communication stringently adopted a public health strategy, but there remains an urgency to indigenise global health responses through the lens of glocal knowledge, cultural contexts, and challenges emanating from behavioural change complexities. Two trajectories account for the rise of health communication: the first sets health on the agenda of public health and health promotion, while the second contextualises health communication as a subdiscipline within the field of communication for development and social change. Health communication, embedded within the field of communication for development and social change, allows for a theorisation and critique of public health issues in a South African context through localised cultural contexts and draws impetus to community engagement. This chapter offers a reflective discussion of these theoretical perspectives in the context of the initial phases of the South Africa lockdown. This study adopts a communication for development and social change lens to discuss and critique the initial public health approach of physical distancing in communities during the initial phase of the South African lockdown and how it was localised at community levels. In many cases, deep rural communities have localised their COVID-19 responses, reconstructing and adapting the dominant health messages in marginalised settings, affirming the presence of a glocalised COVID-19 communicative response. This chapter argues that COVID-19 prevention strategies are likely to yield better health outcomes when community voices and dialogue are integrated as part of a comprehensive preventive approach for South African communities.
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Notes
- 1.
Displaced Nation shares a passion for the ‘displaced life’ of global residency and travel—particularly when it leads to creative pursuits, be it writing, art, food, business, or even humo(u)r.
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Govender, E. (2021). Tailoring COVID-19 Communication for Local South African Contexts: Challenges, Contradictions, and Consequences of a Dominant Public Health Response. In: Lewis, M., Govender, E., Holland, K. (eds) Communicating COVID-19. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79735-5_6
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