Crisis Communication: Preventive Communicative Approaches in the Light of Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

In the COVID-19 process, two main parties have come to the fore in Turkey: those who manage the crisis and those who are affected by the crisis. In this project, it is aimed to examine mutually the communicative attitudes and behaviors adopted by the parties during the epidemic process. In this context; NS. understand citizens' communicative responses to the epidemic crisis; and ii. It is aimed to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the crisis communication approach adopted by those who manage the crisis. In the project, more than 1.5 million posts produced on Twitter by those who manage the crisis and those affected by the crisis during the COVID-19 epidemic were analyzed, and findings that would provide social benefits were reached. First of all, it was observed that negative emotions were more dominant than positive emotions in the emotional state of citizens during the epidemic. Negative mood showed itself mostly as emotions such as anxiety, panic, (chaos, panic) and fear (anger, anger, hatred, nervousness). On the other hand, it was determined that the Minister of Health, who was in the position of crisis manager during the epidemic, preferred a one-way communication model specific to traditional media instead of two-way communication in Twitter, which was determined as a communication channel, even though he applied a linguistically integrative and generally confidence-building strategy. This model, after a while, turned into the routine synchronous format of traditional media broadcasting and prevented the citizens from seeing the communicative reactions experienced during the epidemic process. Based on these two findings in the project, it was concluded that a communication model is necessary to keep the communication dynamic between the crisis managers and the citizens affected by the crisis in the future. The project has achieved three main goals by mutually analyzing the communicative attitudes and behaviors adopted by those who manage the COVID-19 epidemic process and those affected by this epidemic. In this context; (NS). It has been revealed what the communicative reactions of citizens to the epidemic crisis can be, (ii). The nature of the crisis communication approach adopted by the crisis managers was revealed and (iii). In the light of the results obtained, a functional crisis communication model was designed. The project proposes a communication model for possible future crises in the light of the lessons revealed by the COVID-19 outbreak. The developed crisis communication model, unlike its counterparts, does not include a to-do list, but offers a dynamic and flexible network-based organization proposal to make possible crises manageable through its technological and human capabilities.