Health Communication and Socio-cultural Behavioural Change in Respect to COVID-19 in South Africa

Abstract

The Coronavirus pandemic in South Africa resulted in negative effects with high infection rates, health care shortages, increases in death rates, plus a collapsing economy. There was an urgent need for precautionary health promotional campaigns to educate populations about the virus. However, with South Africa’s diverse population cultural beliefs, socio-cultural aspects needed to be catered for. Health literacy also had to be considered for effective positive behaviour change patterns to occur. Social barriers such as misinformation, stigma, myths, anxiety and prejudice resulted into infodemics emerging in the population. Media representation about the pandemic needed to ensure truthful and authentic information reached target audiences. Specific examples related to religious beliefs (the Chief Justice Mogeng Mogeng) and cultural remedies (Madagascar’s artemisia or “green gold”) are included in this chapter, to elaborate examples of such cases in South Africa, with no audience engagement analysed. Two health promotional campaigns, Count Me In and We will beat this are analysed via a qualitative multimodal analysis. Behaviour change communication theories are included to triangulate and validate the findings. Findings indicated that health campaigns need to cater for socio-cultural diversities and be audience specific in order for adequate behaviour change to occur, via clear health messages.

Citation

Moola, S. (2022), "Health Communication and Socio-cultural Behavioural Change in Respect to COVID-19 in South Africa", Dralega, C.A. and Napakol, A. (Ed.) COVID-19 and the Media in Sub-Saharan Africa: Media Viability, Framing and Health Communication, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 163-178. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80382-271-620221011