A new book co-edited by Griffith University’s Dr Monique Lewis will share international experiences and insights about communication during the COVID pandemic.
The soon to be released book is part of Dr Lewis’ research focusing on health communication, news and social media coverage of health issues including the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new edited collection, to be released in June, is the second collection Dr Lewis has co-edited about COVID-19 communication. The first book Communicating COVID-19: Interdisciplinary Perspectives was published in 2021 by Palgrave Macmillan and was co-edited by Dr Lewis and her colleagues Associate Professor Eliza Govender and Dr Kate Holland.
Dr Lewis said the book includes contributions from academics and industry and would be of interest to those working in government, journalists, policy makers and health communicators.
“It has been a rich experience working with world leading scholars in bringing this collection together with great co-editors,” Dr Lewis said.
“I am really proud of the wide range of contributions from different countries and different cultural contexts in the new book”.
She said the pandemic highlighted that public trust was seriously lacking in those tasked with communicating with the public including government, health officials, journalists, scientific and medical experts.
“The pandemic really brought to the fore the central role of communication in a health crisis. It also highlighted that despite the pandemic being forecast for decades, that we were unprepared for it,” Dr Lewis said.
Dr Lewis’ latest book builds on her passion for ensuring social justice through critical communication and her research highlights where health communication goes wrong but also where it benefits people.
She said communicating health issues is complex and often goes awry but scholarly research such as hers was able to help improve approaches to this type of communication.
