Research Snapshot: Understanding COVID-19 risk perceptions to enhance risk communication

At the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Finland’s national health authority began receiving comments and requests for information from the public that conveyed anxiety, misinformation, and distrust. In order to inform communications, researchers set out to explore the different ways that perceptions of risk were being expressed in these messages. They established a methodology for health authorities to ensure that members of the public would perceive their communications about risk as relevant, trustworthy, compassionate, culturally competent, and easy to understand. This paper shows the results and recommendations from the researchers’ first three weeks of monitoring.

Check out the full EENet research snapshot in English here or in French here.