Leadership and trust: public communication of Covid in Scotland (March-December 2020)
- Project
- Where might this research lead?
- How will the funding help you?
- Useful Contacts
The project aims to provide a narrative of how the Covid crisis played out in public communication in Scotland, identifying key moments, key actors, and the nature of the public discourse(s). The project will investigate how leadership was performed during the crisis, including factors such as the public’s construction of risk and trust in response to political leadership demonstrated in public communication; the way in which the media represented leadership in this crisis; and public communication leadership as it emerged in social media networks..
This project aims to contribute to a better understanding of the role that political and communication leadership plays in tackling urgent social problems. This project will offer an analysis of the Covid crisis in Scotland through the prism of public communication. Ultimately the project aims to draw lessons about the relationship between communication, leadership, and public trust transferrable to other urgent, ongoing or emerging issues such as climate crisis adaptation or post-Brexit Scotland.
The funding given to this project will cover most staff costs, calculated in relation to the specific stream of research (media content analysis, social media and social network analysis, journalistic work involved in media content production across all media). In total this funding will pay for 48 days of investigators’ time, 36 days of research assistants’ work, and just over £4,000 worth of specialist data services and software specific to this project.
Staff ProfilesÂ
Paolo Casteltrione staff profile
Kirsten Knowles staff profile (PSE)
Alenka Jelen (Communications, Media, Culture, University of Stirling)
Contacts
Division:
Media, Communication and Performing Arts (QMU); Psychology, Sociology and Education (QMU); (Communications, Media, Culture, University of Stirling)