Open Access<p>When Politics Meets Pandemic: How Prime Minister Netanyahu and a Small Team Communicated Health and Risk Information to the Israeli Public During the Early Stages of COVID-19</p>
Author(s) -
Anat GesserEdelsburg,
Rana Hijazi
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
risk management and healthcare policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.828
H-Index - 22
ISSN - 1179-1594
DOI - 10.2147/rmhp.s280952
Subject(s) - public health , government (linguistics) , thematic analysis , politics , interim , narrative , public relations , medicine , newspaper , political science , public administration , qualitative research , media studies , law , sociology , social science , nursing , linguistics , philosophy
The coronavirus brought the world's leaders to the center of the media stage, where they not only managed the COVID-19 pandemic but also communicated it to the public. The means they used to communicate the global pandemic reveal their strategies and the narratives they chose to create in their nation's social consciousness. In Israel, the crisis broke out after three election cycles, such that the government in charge of the crisis was an interim government under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was operating under three criminal indictments. This study sought to examine the ways in which Prime Minister Netanyahu and two senior Israel Ministry of Health officials-Director General Moshe Bar Siman Tov and Prof. Sigal Sadetsky, Head of Public Health Services-communicated information about the health crisis in Israel during what has been termed the first wave and the beginning of the second wave.