Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Jul 2025

Risk Revisited: The Role of Technical Communication in Negotiating Barriers to Effective Health Risk Messaging

Kathryn Lambrecht Arizona State University

Abstract

Social media, the pandemic, and environmental hazards have all played a role in shifting the landscape of risk communication. This paper takes a retroactive risk approach to study how COVID-19 messaging was shaped in the first 2 years of the pandemic. Using a corpus of 764 news releases from five health departments, I combine corpus analysis with coding based on government capacities to show that health departments highlighted public health data (surveillance) and risk guidance (governance), while downplaying enforcement (coercion). This process of revisiting communication from an acute risk phase can help us recalibrate how public health roles are constituted through language to prepare for future events.

Journal
Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Published
2025-07-01
DOI
10.1177/00472816241262237
Open Access
Closed
Topics
quantitative research social media technical communication place and space

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Kenzie et al. (2025)
    Don’t Read the Comments: Discourse About COVID-19 Vaccines in a State Health De…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication

Cites in this index (17)

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    Cannabis Risk Communication: A Scoping Review with a Research Agenda
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    Key-notes: A Content Analysis of ATTW Conferences 1998-2018
    Technical Communication Quarterly
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    Communicating an Outbreak: The Visual Genres of Zika Virus Reports
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
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    Communicating During COVID-19 and Other Acute-Event Scenarios: A Practical Approach
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  5. Amidon et al. (2021)
    Visual Risk Literacy in “Flatten the Curve” COVID-19 Visualizations
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Show all 17 →
  1. Carlson et al. (2021)
    Rural Health and Contextualizing Data
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  2. Frith (2021)
    Introduction to Business and Technical Communication and COVID-19: Communicatin…
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  3. Graham (2021)
    Misinformation Inoculation and Literacy Support Tweetorials on COVID-19
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  4. Koerber (2021)
    Is It Fake News or Is It Open Science? Science Communication in the COVID-19 Pandemic
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
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    Lean Data Visualization: Considering Actionable Metrics for Technical Communication
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
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    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
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    Zombie Ent(r)ailments in Risk Communication: A Rhetorical Analysis of the CDC’s…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
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    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
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Also cites 19 works outside this index ↓
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CrossRef global citation count: 2 View in citation network →

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