To pivot a nation: a comparison of national pandemic response speeches during the initial spread of COVID-19

Abstract

As the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world in early 2020, dozens of world leaders addressed their nations with a specific rhetorical goal: to convince their citizens to comply with pandemic management policies that would drastically impact normal life. This moment of global pivot presented a rare opportunity to compare the responses of world leaders and study the forms of rhetoric present when faced with an immediate crisis. What themes were used to persuade nations to accept change? Some pointed to science, but in what role was science positioned? And how widely was it drawn upon across global discourse? Though studies have investigated the discourse of COVID-19 around the world, considering the way leaders positioned science in their discourse is underexplored within literature. Here I generate a dataset of speeches given by leaders from 57 countries around the first most-major policy response to COVID-19 in February to April 2020. I then qualitatively identify and discuss the emerging themes within this discourse, with a close focus on the conceptual metaphors in use and the positioning of science within these speeches. This research finds that war metaphor was used pervasively contributing to an overall conceptualisation of COVID-19 as a war. Science was found to present in two distinct roles against the backdrop of this - ‘science as a mentor’, providing advice and justification for policy responses, and ‘science as saviour’, being associated with hope for the future and an end of the pandemic. I discuss the concerns with the pervasive war metaphor, particularly its impacts on the communication landscape as the pandemic progresses, and the limitations of the two main positionings of science. I argue that while this may reflect increased political appreciation for the value of science in a crisis, the constraints of simplifying science’s role on such a large scale may perpetuate a perception of science as a tool that can be used to solve problems, and influence the conversation around science to overemphasise application and under emphasise the value of curiosity driven or basic science research. Show more