A percepção dos alagoanos sobre a crise de saúde [comunicação] pública no Brasil: o caso da pandemia da COVID-19

Abstract

The new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has become a serious global public health problem from 2020, having become, still in the first half of the same year, a pandemic according to the World Health Organization. In Brazil, in particular, the health crisis has also unfolded into an institutional, political, economic, and social crisis. At this juncture, this work sought to investigate the perception of people from Alagoas about the Covid-19 crisis through a study conducted in two stages: in the first stage, the social network pages of the Alagoas government are analyzed in order to identify the communication strategies used from the emergence of the virus; in the second stage, a survey was conducted with the population of Alagoas. Within this context, the main objective was to investigate the perception of the population of Alagoas about the measures to contain the crisis resulting from the pandemic of the new coronavirus (Covid-19) in Brazil. Firty, we used the qualitative research of content analysis on the networks and, later, a quantitative research methodology, with the application of a questionnaire distributed online, seeking to reach as many people as possible, with the purpose of knowing the socioeconomic characteristics of the audience and questioning them about issues related to Covid-19. The theoretical reference sought to across issues such as crisis management, enphasizing the importance of communication in critical moments, such as the health crisis of the new coronavirus, as well as the impacts that misinformation brought to society, being it one of the problems in facing the pandemic, used even in political discourse by the former President, Jair Bolsonaro, who mobilized public opinion to adopt behaviors harmful to collective health. The results of the research allowed us to identify that, in general, all the publics in the research converge in the opinion that the Covid-19 was a situation of public health emergency and agreed on the measures to contain the spread of the virus, but when the cut by political spectrum is made they diverge on the social isolation and perception of the democratic regime. Therefore, it is important to point out that, beyond the limits of political positioning, the dispute over the narratives of the federal and state authorities around the public health crisis had effects on the behavior of individuals.