The Regional Municipality of Niagara was effective in its website communications during the COVID-19 crisis, but the websites of its 12 local municipalities were less successful in relaying information to their constituents, according to recent Brock research.

“Everything was top notch on the Niagara Region website, but you can’t always depend on people going to that site,” says Assistant Professor of Communication, Popular Culture and Film Duncan Koerber, the lead author of a study published recently in the Canadian Journal of Communication.

Koerber and his team sought to better understand the “important but under-appreciated role” municipal governments played in boosting communities’ resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic through their online crisis communications efforts.

By analyzing communications during the pandemic, the researchers aimed to see if and how municipalities could be better prepared to transmit information in future crisis situations.

The researchers collected thousands of web pages on the 13 municipalities’ official COVID-19 websites captured and stored from March 2020 to December 2021 through the Archive-It platform. The team used computational methods to analyze the sites and see how they changed over time.

The team analyzed the quality of the sites using three principles: information, education and engagement, including crisis communications.

Accurate information allowed residents to know how to proceed with tasks in light of the various restrictions, addressing such issues as returning library books, depositing batteries in the recycling depot and visiting local municipal offices to pay bills and taxes.

Education involved explaining the nature of COVID, its symptoms, how to wear a mask properly and how to distance effectively among other topics.

“But there also needs to be emotional engagement, statements like ‘we’re all in this together,’ praising people who are following the rules and warnings of consequences of not following the rules,” says Koerber.

The research revealed Niagara Region’s COVID-19 website was the most comprehensive, helpful and provided a wide range of topics in clearly laid-out categories.

“The individual municipalities didn’t necessarily do that,” he says. “There needs to be more communication between the individual 12 municipalities to raise the level of each website in terms of its comprehensiveness, information quality and consistency in messaging, especially around guidance.”

The researchers found that:

• Across the 13 municipalities, most messaging around infection control — stay at home as much as possible, wash hands, stand two metres away from others, wear a face covering — was clear and consistent and frequently used infographics.
• During the early days of the pandemic, messaging from some municipalities on transmission of the virus and masking went against established science and was contradicted not long after posting, possibly decreasing trust among citizens.
• Some COVID-19 pages contained links to a wide range of information including news, mayoral messages, enforcement of mandatory closures and restrictions and resources to help residents take care of their mental and physical health while others had very little informational content.
• Each municipality also employed at least two major social media platforms but the prominence of the social media accounts on the web pages varied substantially.
• The tone of messaging also varied, from neutral to positive to empathetic to scolding.

These and other findings are included in “The Role of Municipalities in Communicating for Community Resilience during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Study of Niagara Region’s Crisis Communication” published in the Canadian Journal of Communication in March.

Koerber’s team was made up of Brock University librarians, including Digital Scholarship Librarian Tim Ribaric, Research Assistant Fletcher Johnson and Head of Archives and Special Collections David Sharron. Also on the team was Cal Murgu from Western University.