COVID-19 has affected the world in dramatic ways, making it challenging for societies to keep up with the latest information and to know what to do in this unprecedented situation.<\/p>\n
As part of a larger international project, Brock University researchers are shedding light on how the pandemic\u2019s impacts and subsequent measures were communicated in Niagara.<\/p>\n
The five-member team, led by the Brock University Library, aims to determine the effectiveness of Niagara\u2019s crisis communications by collecting and analyzing web archives of how organizations in the Niagara region responded to government COVID-19 mandates and the messaging they used to inform their networks.<\/p>\n
The project, \u201cCrisis Communication in the Niagara region during the COVID-19 Pandemic<\/a>,\u201d is focusing on three types of organizations: local government, non-profit groups and major private entities.<\/p>\n The idea is to examine a broad range of large data sets from websites and social media posts from these organizations to discern systematic communications patterns in information regarding the nature of the pandemic and how best to respond.<\/p>\n \u201cFindings from this research aim to inform future crisis communication organizational planning, specifically at the local and municipal level,\u201d says Tim Ribaric, Acting Head of Brock\u2019s Digital Scholarship Lab.<\/p>\n \u201cThe project will also create several open computational notebooks to support teaching, learning, and research,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n An Oct. 5 blog<\/a> written by team member Duncan Koerber, Instructor in the Department of Communications, Popular Culture and Film, outlines themes in crisis communications theory and lists a number of questions the researchers will be asking when they examine the data sets.<\/p>\n Some of these questions include:<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing so far is that, at the early start of the pandemic, there was literally no information and then a sudden influx of information on all these pages that people tried to make sense of, and then a gentle decline after that,\u201d says Ribaric.<\/p>\n He says the team\u2019s early results are indicating that \u201cthis web archive of Niagara COVID information has proved to be a valuable resource in parsing out the area\u2019s reaction to the pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to Ribaric and Koerber, the team includes David Sharron, Head of Archives and Special Collections at the Brock University Library; Cal Murgu, Instructional Design Librarian at the Brock University Library; and Karen Louise Smith, Associate Professor of Communication, Popular Culture and Film. There are also two research assistants associated with the project: Victoria Danh and Fletcher Johnson.<\/p>\n Brock University\u2019s year-long project is part of a larger initiative called the Archives Unleashed project<\/a>, an international initiative funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that aims to make historical internet content accessible to scholars and others interested in researching the recent past.<\/p>\n\n