#EthicsMatter - Ethical point of view on Social marketing: Crisis Resilience in the Covid-19 Pandemic
Presenters and subjects:
1) Theoretical background on social marketing and ethics. Introduction to the research project and reflections on communications campaigns coordinated by the Prime Minister’s Offices both, in Finland and New Zealand.
- Senior lecture, Dr. Soc. Sci. Salli Hakala, University of Helsinki, Finland
2) Community approach to crisis management and communication, crisis resilience, citizen participation and ethics.
- Researcher PhD Aino Ruggiero, Project Researcher, University of Helsinki, Finland
3) “Finland forward” communications project. Coordinated by the Prime Minister’s Office, Finland.
- Head of Communication, PhD Päivi Tampere, Prime Minister’s Office, Finland
Video is based on the research project: Governmental communication during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Social marketing and communication: Community approach means working together with beneficiaries and communities. How to get citizens to work for the common good and endure psychologically in a crisis?
The ethical point of view means that sometimes people have to set aside their interests and act in the best interests of others. That is crucial in the battle against the Covid-19 virus. So, understanding stakeholder needs, perceptions and values is a starting point for ethical communication in crisis situations.
Salli Hakala’s and Aino Ruggiero’s research project at the University of Helsinki belongs to a larger research project, BIBU, led by professor Anu Kantola, University of Helsinki. BIBU – Tackling Biases and Bubbles in Participation, funded by The Academy of Finland https://bibu.fi/en/
Ethics? - Communication campaigns to strengthen psychological resilience in crisis
This research project focuses on government communication during the corona crisis in Finland, mainly. We will make a few critical reflections and comparisons with the New Zealand “Unite against Covid-19” campaign as well as the UK “Stay home Save lives” campaign.
More precisely, on crisis resilience, how it is co-created by authorities and civil society actors.
Community approach refers to how government co-operates with e.g. stakeholders, non-governmental organisations and voluntary social media influencers. Governmental crisis communication with citizens will be analysed from the perspective of crisis resilience by looking at various communication activities, especially “Finland Forward” campaign and asking, what challenges it has involved.
Prime Minister’s Office, Department Communication runs a two-year project (2020-2022) “Finland Forward” which aims at strengthening society’s psychological resilience via communication means. The project works across ministries and civil society groups (NGOs), and regional organisations. It demonstrates the Finnish comprehensive security model, which bases on whole-of-society approach to security and resilience. Psychological resilience is one of the seven vital functions of the Finnish society, which should be, safeguarded in all times in cooperation with public, private and third sector.
Purpose of the Finland Forward project is to:
Strengthen psychological resilience through communication[i].
Build trust and strengthen people’s sense of belonging and belief in the future;
Provide reliable information and tools for dealing with the emotions and uncertainty caused by the crisis;
Demonstrate the importance and value of joint action and assistance
Campaigns about different health issues (e.g. aids, or alcohol and drug abuse) can be, mentioned as typical in social marketing. The Covid-19 crisis has led to a wide range of campaigns in all countries that can be analysed from the perspective of social marketing. That includes the use of various marketing principles, processes, techniques, behavioural theories, models, etc., for inducing a behavioural change in the society against the social issues (Dann, 2010; Bhat, Darzi & Hakim 2019).
Ethics is about being worthy of happiness and worthy of feeling, I am safe, especially in crisis situations. Therefore, we argue that crisis resilience underlies ethical behaviour.
The community approach stands for an ethical approach as it is, based on ethically grounded principles of empowerment, participation, pluralistic dialogues, collectivistic decision making and civic responsibility (Veil 2008, Seeger et al. 2009, Deetz 1992).
Communicating with a community of stakeholders about risks and crises involves several ethical issues, which draw on values, normative systems, and philosophical frameworks to evaluate and “make judgements of good and bad, right and wrong, and acceptable and unacceptable” in crisis situations (Seeger et al. 2009, p. 281). Values are rooted in societies, cultures and communities. Ethical standards, which are essential in crisis situations include, e.g. access to information, accountability, ethics of justice and ethics of care, virtue ethics (Simola 2003; Ulmer, Sellnow & Seeger 2015).
In organisations, ethical principles take the form of ethical codes of conduct, ethics training and specific strategies (Seeger et al. 2009). In the public sector, crisis communication is guided by several statutes, guidelines and recommendations (see, e.g. Prime Minister’s Office 2016).
Understanding stakeholder needs, perceptions and values could be considered a starting point for ethical communication in crisis situations (Ruggiero 2017).
Social marketing and PR in practice are often persuasive communication, and not oriented toward dialogue and mutual understanding, but still ethical. In classification of PR and propaganda, Luck and Ludolph are looking at organizations’ communication with their stakeholders on two dimensions, ethical orientation (ethical vs unethical) and communicative intent (mutual understanding vs persuasion), where the ethical evaluation is categorized in the first, not the latter, dimension (Lock & Ludolph 2020). When considering social marketing, it can be categorized both as persuasive communicative acts, and aimed at mutual understanding by organizations with unethical or ethical intents.
We are analysing in our research project e.g. the Finland Forward communications project. We argue that the community approach is an ethical approach to communication in crises, and valuable for communication professionals, too, for the pandemic where citizen involvement is crucial. The Finland Forward communications package consists of independent actions, campaigns and projects produced by various operators, such as public authorities, businesses and organisations (https://suomitoimii.fi/). Such a project in the Prime Minister's Office is very unique, in Finland, and also very interesting for researchers.
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About the authors:
Senior Lecturer, Dr.Soc.Sci, Salli Hakala, University of Helsinki
Salli Hakala Dr. Social Sciences is Senior lecturer at University of Helsinki. Her research interests are crisis communication and media society, political and governmental communications, organizational communication in a context of professionalization and promotional culture. She is the author of numerous peer-reviewed publications, research reports and books in crisis communication and government communication. The current research project focuses on governmental communication during the Covid-19 pandemic in Finland. She has also collaborated actively with communication professionals, e.g. in the Finnish Association of Communications Professionals.
Researcher PhD Aino Ruggiero, Project researcher, University of Helsinki
Aino Ruggiero PhD is a crisis communication researcher. Her research interests cover crisis communication in the case of terrorism and other complex crises, governmental crisis communication, crisis communication auditing and process approaches, social media monitoring, and community approach to crisis management. She has previously worked as a researcher at the Department of Communication, University of Jyväskylä, and Corporate Communication, Jyväskylä University School of Business & Economics. She is currently cooperating with researchers from the University of Helsinki for a project on governmental communication during the Covid-19 pandemic in Finland.
Päivi Tampere, Head of Communications Prime Minister's Office, Finland
Päivi Tampere is Head of Communications (StratCom) at the Prime Minister's Office. Her team is responsible for communication supporting psychological resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as countering information influencing and disinformation.
Before taking up her current post, Päivi Tampere worked as Head of Communications at the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats. She has also worked as Strategic Communication Advisor to the Government of the Republic of Estonia. Her PhD in Communication Management focused on the construction of the citizen-authority relationship in social media during crises
Finland Forward website (in Finnish): www.suomitoimii.fi
One of the campaigns launched in 2021 was Museum of Contemporary Emotions: www.museumofcontemporaryemotions.fi
References:
[i] Finnish Government. “What is Finland Forward?”, accessed 15 Nov 2021.
Bhat, S.A, Darzi, M.A. & Hakim, I.A. (2019). Understanding Social Marketing and Wellbeing: A Review of Selective Databases. The Journal for Decision Makers 44(2) 75–87, 2019.
Dann, S. (2010). Redefining social marketing with contemporary commercial marketing definitions. Journal of Business Research. 63(2), 147–153
Deetz, S. 1992. Democracy in an age of corporate colonization: Developments in communication and the politics of everyday life. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Lock, I. & Ludoplh, R. Organizational propaganda on the Internet: A systematic review. Public Relations Inquiry 2020, Vol. 9(1) 103– 127.
McGuire, D., Cunningham, J. E., Reynolds, K., & Matthews-Smith, G. (2020). Beating the virus: an examination of the crisis communication approach taken by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern during the Covid-19 pandemic. Human Resource Development International, 23(4), 361-379.
Prime Minister’s Office 2016. Avoimesti, rohkeasti ja yhdessä. Valtionhallinnon viestintäsuositus. Valtioneuvoston kanslian julkaisusarja 14. Valtioneuvoston kanslia. (Transparently, boldly and together. State administration communications recommendation. In Finnish).
Ruggiero, A. 2017. Crisis communication and terrorism. Mapping challenges and co-creating solutions. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978- 951-39-7172-4.
Seeger, M. W., Sellnow, T. L., Ulmer, R. R. & Novak, J. M. 2009. Applied communication ethics: A summary and critique of research literature. In L. R. Frey & K. N. Cissna (Eds) Routledge handbook of applied communication research. New York, NY: Routledge, 280–306.
Simola, S. 2003. Ethics of justice and care in corporate crisis management. Journal of Business Ethics 46 (4), 351–361.
Ulmer, R. R., Sellnow, T. L. & Seeger, M. W. 2015. Effective crisis communication: Moving from crisis to opportunity (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Veil, S. R. 2008. Civic responsibility in a risk democracy. Public Relations Review 34 (4), 387–391.
Lock, I. & Ludoplh, R. Organizational propaganda on the Internet: A systematic review. Public Relations Inquiry 2020, Vol. 9(1) 103– 127.
Bhat, S.A, Darzi, M.A. & Hakim, I.A. (2019). Understanding Social Marketing and Wellbeing: A Review of Selective Databases. The Journal for Decision Makers 44(2) 75–87, 2019.
Dann, S. (2010). Redefining social marketing with contemporary commercial marketing definitions. Journal of Business Research. 63(2), 147–153
Any thoughts or opinions expressed are that of the authors and not of Global Alliance.