Delegitimizing Rural Public Health Departments: How Decaying Local News Ecologies, Misinformation, and Radicalization Undermine Community Storytelling Networks-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

Delegitimizing Rural Public Health Departments: How Decaying Local News Ecologies, Misinformation, and Radicalization Undermine Community Storytelling Networks

Published:2023-05 Issue:1 Volume:707 Page:90-108
ISSN:0002-7162
Container-title:The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
language:en
Short-container-title:The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Author:

Usher Nikki

Abstract

This article considers the public communication challenges that health officials in rural America faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. I analyze the role that public health officials played in communicating news and information about the pandemic in 29 rural counties in Illinois. These officials were challenged by a diminished reporting capacity among local media outlets, and by a political radicalization of local Republicans, who no longer regarded local media as trusted nodes in local storytelling networks. I find that while public health officials can help fill a community’s critical information needs about risk and emergency, the public’s take-up of this information depends on sociocultural and political forces that shape the broader communication context.

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Link

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/00027162231215655

Reference48 articles.

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