Communication Strategy Analysis of COVID-19 Pandemic’s Public Service Announcement (PSA) Production

Abstract

Communication through media is one of the most important aspects if a country faces a health crisis such as a pandemic. One of the mediums that are often used is via the production of public service announcements or PSA. PSA is a short video lasting between 30 to 120 seconds, communicating to large-scale audiences for social behaviour changes. However, certain PSA will be considered a failure if the audience ignores or does not understand the message. When Malaysia faces a health crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the PSA barely emphasises the aspects of behavioural balance, message recall, and the aesthetic of message presentation. Thus, this paper aims to discuss the mode of presentation and styles in 30 public service announcements related to COVID-19 in MyHealth’s YouTube channel under the Ministry of Health Malaysia (MOH) from January to June 2020. The preliminary finding shows that most PSAs used 2D animation production techniques by representing the real scenarios and situations faced by the Malaysian to facilitate the audience's understanding of the message. Overall, PSA's presentation style on COVID-19 in Malaysia emphasises the balance between the importance of message and communication strategy with five phases in the theory of audience behavioural change. Keywords: Public service announcement, media production, crisis communication, pandemic, COVID-19.