Global Health Governance Communication: Cascading Health Security Policies during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The study is a qualitative content analysis on how the cascade of information and knowledge, through the language and framing of the policies at global, national, and subnational levels, may influence social norms and sociopolitical structures as well as the dynamics of interdependencies towards international cooperation. It answered three questions in terms of ideas, information, and feelings that are communicated through the policies coming from global health institutions; mechanisms of power and interdependence, that were communicated and normalized through the policies at the national and subnational levels; and the policies’ communicative constitution of cooperation for global health security. The analysis focused on health policies issued during the COVID-19 pandemic that targeted vaccination, health workers, discrimination, community quarantine, and face masks/shields. A typology of global health governance communication (GHG-C) is recommended based on the thorough reading, coding process, and code document and code co-occurrence analyses, using Norbert Elias’ concepts, that were done on 210 health policies cascading from the global (n=28), national (n=86) and subnational (n=96) levels. This includes Figuration Architecture, Sentiment Building, Power Diffusion, Norms Setting, Reinforcement, and Global Connect. Based on the results of the study, Global Health Governance Communication (GHG-C) is a field of communication that examines the thread of messages and language conveying ideas, information and emotions that cascades from global guidance to national and subnational policies and weaves the social fabric covering institutional and socialvalues, relationships, controls, behaviors and norms on health.