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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Commun.
Sec. Disaster Communications
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1423942
This article is part of the Research Topic Communication Strategies in Public Health Disasters View all articles

Communicating Coping During the Pandemic: An Analysis of the Presidential Addresses of Ghana and Nigeria During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Provisionally accepted
Ernest A. Eshun Ernest A. Eshun *Abigail Olajire Abigail Olajire Esther Akheituame Esther Akheituame
  • University of Missouri, Columbia, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Coping is a well-studied concept across multiple disciplines, including communication and psychology. Over the years, studies have identified that individuals and organizations use varying coping strategies to deal with an unpleasant phenomenon. This paper analyzed themes of coping within the presidential addresses of Ghana and Nigeria during the COVID-19 pandemic.We argued that an investigation into these important official documents from the two Global South countries could offer propagative ideas for the communication subareas of health communication, mass communication, disaster, and crisis communication. After analyzing the presidential addresses, the study identified emerging patterns of African communication systems, social comparison, and politico-religious communication as coping themes embedded in the speeches. The role of the African communication system and implications for collective coping, cultural values, and local resources as agents for national coping strategy are discussed.

    Keywords: coping, Health Communication, COVID-19, Presidential address, Public Health

    Received: 26 Apr 2024; Accepted: 11 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Eshun, Olajire and Akheituame. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Ernest A. Eshun, University of Missouri, Columbia, United States

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