Institutional Advertising in the Face of COVID-19 Hoaxes: Strategies, Messages and Narratives in the Spanish Case

Abstract

The present work addresses the importance of institutional advertising to counter hoaxes during the first ten months since the outbreak of COVID-19. Institutional advertising campaigns run by Spanish central and regional governments have been studied from a quantitative point of view to establish their length, periodicity, views and interactions, and from a qualitative point of view in terms of strategy, intentionality, discourse and narrative and filming techniques. The main results suggest that institutional advertising campaigns are clearly focused on social networks and have not been the main tool to fight COVID-19 hoaxes, but rather to inform citizens. Their main characters are anonymous people, followed by affected individuals and health care workers, and these campaigns showed greater intensity during the first months of the pandemic and picked up again in December, due to fear of the consequences of a third wave. It can also be said that the different public administrations have fulfilled their duty to inform public opinion.

This work is part of the project “Digital narratives against misinformation. A study of social networks, themes and formats of Ibero-American fact-checkers”, funded by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación [State Research Agency] of the Government of Spain, within the State Program of Research, Development and Innovation Oriented to the Challenges of Society (PID2019-108035RB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033).