New research examines how Norwegian health authorities responded to the sudden COVID-19 crisis, and how they managed to efficiently communicate with the public throughout a long-lasting crisis with intense peaks.
In his PhD thesis, Truls Strand Offerdal examines how the COVID-19 pandemic challenged the Norwegian Health authorities in their crisis and risk communication. Through rhetorical theory, he shows how the pandemic particularly proved challenging in its duration, complexity and varying severity, in ways that demanded for authorities to adapt and adjust their approaches to crisis communication. In the thesis, Offerdal argues that authorities had to change their approaches to how they built their trustworthiness, how they approached dialogue on social media and how they approached previous crisis plans in order to efficiently respond to the specific conditions of a global pandemic.
In order to better understand and prepare for these forms of complex crises, Offerdal argues that researchers and practitioners involved in crisis communication should focus on the internal processes and dynamics in organizations that allow for deliberation and navigation of new and unexpected challenges. Being prepared for crises could then entail focusing on overarching values and principles, as well as practical structures for improvisation and cooperation, rather than detailed and linear plans for specific scenarios. Through such an approach crisis communicators could be better prepared for future complex crises.
Truls Strand Offerdal successfully defended his dissertation on 15 March 2023.
Trial lecture
Designated topic: "What is the relation between the concepts of ethos, persona, and trust?"
Evaluation committee
Professor Orla Vigsö, University of Gothenburg (first opponent)
Professor Lisa Storm Villadsen, University of Copenhagen (second opponent)
Professor Terje Rasmussen, University of Oslo (committee administrator)
Chair of the defence
Professor emeritus Helge Rønning
Supervisors
Professor Øyvind Ihlen, University of Oslo
Professor Sine Nørholm Just, Roskilde University