Chris Liebold
Ilmenau's lord mayor and the editor-in-chief of the Thüringer Allgemeine newspaper spoke with researchers at Ilmenau Technical University about politics and the media in times of crisis
The discussion round during TU Ilmenau's "Wissenschaftsnacht" (Science Night) at the beginning of July 2023 focused on the question of what we can learn from the Corona pandemic and how politics, the media and the public can better manage future crises. In addition to the lord mayor of Ilmenau, Dr. Daniel Schultheiß, and the editor-in-chief of the Thüringer Allgemeine, Jan Hollitzer, the scientists Kathrin Schleicher from the Research group Media Studies at the TU Ilmenau and Prof. Dr. Nadine Steinmetz from the Bergische Universität Wuppertal discussed the issue.
Petra Enders, District Administrator of the Il-Kreis, was also among the guests in the well-attended lecture hall. The audience participated with questions and comments on topics such as misinformation and conspiracy narratives during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The starting points for the discussion were results from two research projects at the TU Ilmenau on risk and crisis communication during pandemics. Schultheiß and Hollitzer addressed the challenges of a mega crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic for local authority communication and regional journalism in their contributions.
The results of a representative survey of all German counties and independent cities made clear that local authorities were confronted with a variety of problems during the pandemic. Time pressure, improvised measures at the municipal level, and insufficient lead time for policy guidance were major criticisms. Communication was inconsistent, and municipal authorities often received information about policy decisions only through the media.
Lord mayor Schultheiß emphasized the positive role of social media in communicating with the unsettled population, but also confirmed the problems with misinformation and disinformation explained by Hollitzer. In addition, the importance of science communication was discussed in order to be able to convey scientific results in an understandable way.
In the MIRKKOMM project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Prof. Dr. Martin Löffelholz, Kathrin Schleicher and Johanna Radechovsky are investigating how government risk and crisis communication in Germany can be improved. Computer scientist Prof. Dr. Nadine Steinmetz is analyzing how citizens and authorities in Germany, Europe and the USA used social media during the pandemic in the DECIPHER project funded by the German Research Foundation. The discussion was moderated by Dr. Andreas Schwarz, who is leading a project in the DECIPHER consortium to analyze international media coverage of the pandemic.
More information and contact:
DECIPHER: https://www.tu-ilmenau.de/decipher
MIRKKOMM: https://mirkkomm.de/