Crisis communication and risk communication as two forms of political communication: a brief review

Political communication is not limited to the traditional sphere of electoral campaigns. The main needs of politicians are now concentrated outside the voting period and require increasing specialization in areas such as governmental communication or crisis communication, within the framework of a society of growing risks (Beck, 1992).

In this context, the objective of crisis communication is to "provide certainty and eliminate conflict" (Riorda, 2011, p. 30). For Olsson (2014, p. 9), the purpose of this type of communication is to "maintain reputation and foster resilience". The absence of strategic planning in the communicative dimension of crises can end up "transmitting alarmist messages to the population" and thus "contribute to administrations being seen as suspicious or untrustworthy" (Granda Revilla, 2015, p. 69). The reputational damage that operates on leaders and institutions as a consequence of a non-strategic crisis management without foresight has driven a wide scientific production on recommended actions in these cases. We could summarize in two main items the guidelines that are repeatedly pointed out to achieve a virtuous communicative management of crises: a) "in crisis communication the only option is the truth, even if it is painful or harmful" and b) "it is always preferable to err on the side of alarm rather than underestimate the damage or consequences" (Riorda, 2012, pp. 39-40).

Along with crisis communication, risk communication appears as "a process that involves the dissemination of information on the risks faced by a community". Risk communication is an eminently preventive and educational action that pursues, equally, to prevent the occurrence of certain damages and to accurately inform citizens in order to guide their behavior towards safe dynamics (Rosas Rodríguez and Barrios Puga, 2017, p. 183). Riorda (2011, pp. 21, 33) distinguishes risk communication from crisis communication according to whether the aim is to "close a process" (in the case of the latter), or "modify perceptions and generate a change in behaviors" (for the former). The Pan American Health Organization [PAHO] defines the purpose of risk communication as "that every person exposed to a risk is able to make informed decisions to mitigate the effects of the threat, such as a disease outbreak, and to take protective and preventive measures and actions".

Source: own elaboration based on Riorda, Elizalde, Fernández, and Riorda (2011).

The spokesperson: decisive role in the communication of a crisis

Among the "strategic steps necessary to control the crisis as soon as possible", March Cerdá (2011, p. 65) points out the obligation to "select a spokesperson with training in public communication and who uses the arguments previously prepared by the anti-crisis management team in an appropriate, clear and precise manner". Going deeper into the importance of the spokesperson within the communication strategy to deal with a crisis, the same author identifies as one of the "most common errors in risk communication in health crises" that the organization is not able to clearly define "a person who will be a spokesperson" or that "the person who acts as spokesperson does so unprepared, without thinking about the consequences of his or her interventions" (Cerdá, 2011, p. 62).

Many crisis communication manuals from different organizations are already beginning to integrate and recognize the spokesperson as a key element to ensure the successful management of this type of situation. For example, that of the Spanish Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) postulates the need to have, as an indispensable part of the communication process, a reliable and unique spokesperson with a deep understanding of the technical aspects of the crisis (CSN, 2012, p. 25).

Among all possible crises (nuclear, natural, security...), we cannot forget that crises related to vital risk "have moved from purely health scenarios to social and political environments where the media factor becomes more relevant" (Moreno, 2008, p. 118). Because of the impact of a health crisis on the collective imagination and on the future of institutions, Crespo and Garrido (2020, p. 15) insist on the idea that "it is necessary to choose the spokespersons of the crisis carefully". They also recall the existing consensus in the protocols on the convenience that "there should be a single spokesperson to avoid contradictions in public appearances", a view in which Medina (2017, p. 64) agrees, highlighting the role of spokespersons as "face of the organization and those who humanize the message". Moreover, if the spokesperson is an "expert", it is easier for this author that "communication during a crisis is much more efficient and effective" (Medina, 2017, p. 65).

Paniagua Gallart (2012, pp. 12-13) argues that, although there is an unconscious idea that the spokesperson of the crisis should be the top leader of the organization, it is convenient to separate the usual spokesperson and leadership function from the spokesperson of a crisis, avoiding the mortgage that being forever associated with a negative crisis situation entails for the image of the leader. If we review some of the health crises in contemporary Spain (bovine spongiform encephalopathy at the beginning of the century, the influenzavirus A outbreak in 2009 or the Ebola virus in 2014), in all of them it has been the Ministers of Health of the time, Celia Villalobos, Trinidad Jiménez and Ana Mato, respectively, who have acted as spokespersons and main protagonists of crisis communication.

Possibly as a result of the limited success of crisis management strategies led by politicians, as happened with the aforementioned ministers, the current literature coincides in favor of a technical spokesperson over a political spokesperson. In the recent book Comunicación política en tiempos de coronavirus, the consultant Xavier Peytibi (2020, p. 13) considers it an unavoidable necessity to face a crisis "to have a good spokesperson" and that he/she "should be an expert, that is, an epidemiologist in this case, and that he/she should report on a daily basis. He has much more credibility than a political spokesman. It is a matter of being a notary and not a protagonist". Verónica Fumanal (2020, pp. 23-27) expressly reflects on the dichotomy between "expert spokesperson" and "political spokesperson" in the same book and does so on the basis of three decisive variables: "credibility, attractiveness and power". Fumanal postulates a greater suitability of the technical spokesperson to the credibility criterion, while the political spokesperson inherently has greater attractiveness and power. Underlying this dichotomy is the choice of the preferred attributes of leadership, which will be influenced by the needs of the context, depending on whether the aim is to build legitimacy via technical-scientific rationality or by the more decisive and ideological-discursive component.

In any case, the spokesperson of a crisis, whether technical or political, will be the socially recognized face of the decisions taken and will have the delicate task of transmitting all the messages that the institution constructs in this respect. Saló Lloveras (2008, p. 23) points out that "the spokesperson is not only responsible for the messages that are transmitted, but must also be involved in their elaboration in order to make them his own". There can be no successful crisis management without good communication, but neither can there be good crisis communication without a correct exercise of the spokesperson function, because "the spokesperson's performance can condition the public's perception of crisis communication management" (Crespo et al., 2017, p. 126), which is why it is increasingly necessary to focus the attention of studies on this figure.

The election of the spokesperson

One of the most important decisions to correctly manage crisis communication is the choice of spokesperson. This decision involves, first of all, the question of whether it is more appropriate for the work to be carried out by a single person or, on the contrary, by several (choral spokesperson). Secondly, the other big question to ask when it comes to appointing our crisis spokesperson is whether he or she should have a technical or political profile, giving priority to political leadership or professional expertise.

This double debate is one of the main threads of this section, applied to a specific context, the Spanish government's management of the Covid-19 crisis.

How many spokespersons?

In the decisions taken by the Government of Spain it is possible to identify, in addition to Fernando Simón (the director of the Emergency and Health Alert Coordination Center), the main image of the communication of this crisis, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez and the Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, up to four other regular spokespersons: Miguel Villarroya (Chief of Defence Staff), José Ángel González (Commissioner General of the National Police), Laurentino Ceña (Lieutenant General of the Civil Guard) and María José Rallo (Secretary General of Transport and Mobility). If in the first phase of the crisis (January-February 2020), the appearances were led exclusively by Fernando Simón, with Minister Illa reinforcing Simón's communication with media interviews, after the declaration of the state of alarm, Simón began to be accompanied by the members of the so-called "Technical Management Committee", second-level policy makers or officials with senior positions belonging to various relevant thematic areas. The members of the Technical Management Committee were joined by recurrent appearances of the different ministers (up to 53 between March 15 and April 26), especially of those members of the Government who made up the "Single Command", and two press conferences of the "health officials": María José Sierra, of the Center for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies (Sierra has come to replace Simón as the main spokesperson when he fell ill); Patricia Lacruz (director general of Basic Portfolio and Pharmacy of the Ministry of Health); María Jesús Lamas (director of the Spanish Medicines Agency); Raquel Yotti (director of the Carlos III Health Institute) and Rodrigo Gutiérrez (director general of Professional Management of the Ministry of Health).

In total, nine people have acted as spokespersons at some point during the crisis, plus the President of the Government and the ministers. Not all the spokespersons have had the same relevance nor have their appearances been equally recurrent. Some have only appeared on a couple of occasions, and Fernando Simón has undoubtedly been the main spokesman of what could be identified as a system of coordinated, multiple and mixed spokespersons. The technical part has been led by Dr. Simón and the political part has fallen to the President himself and the Minister of Health.

Although it is advisable that the spokesperson be a single spokesperson (Cf. Costa-Sánchez and López-García, 2020: 5) to avoid duplication and chaotic discourse, the government strategy has opted to present multiple voices to society, although not all of them were on the same hierarchical level. It is important that the different actors managing (and suffering) the crisis know who the official government spokesperson is, "someone with prestige and recognition in society, not just any improvised politician" (Cf. Medina, 2017, p. 64). What it is about is that the receivers of communication know "to whom they should turn to demand information" (Cf. Medina, 2017, p. 64). In this sense, even with the presence of a wide distribution of specific spokespersons, the Government of Spain would have been right in the designation of Fernando Simón as the main spokesperson, as he has been recognized by the citizens as a whole, becoming the focus of both praise (in a process of generating personal branding worthy of analysis) and criticism from society and political groups.

The choral spokesperson model has generated moments of confusion, such as continuous derivations of the same question between different spokespersons, as a result of their lack of knowledge of each other's areas of competence. If the objective of crisis communication is to provide certainty to the people who listen to you, seeing ministers passing questions to each other is certainly not the best strategy. The more spokespersons appear at the same time and over time, the more likely it is that there will be errors. However, even if it goes against the theory, it is understandable that the Spanish Executive chose to have several spokespersons given the cross-cutting nature of this crisis, which affected many governmental tasks, not because of the health issue, but because of the consequences derived from it.

All of the above is based on the premise that communication (including crisis and risk communication) must be adapted to its context, and this context has been a true "total crisis" that has put the most established academic theories to the test. In general, it is advisable that the number of spokespersons be as few as possible and, if it is unique, the better. First, because it is easier to homogenize and prepare the message when there are few spokespersons; second, because, for the public, the coexistence of two or more transmitting voices makes communication more complicated as a general matter; third, because each person communicates in a different way and it is important that the receivers of the message (the citizens) adapt to the way a spokesperson communicates so that they can understand the message more easily; and, fourth, because the same thing happens with the media: not all politicians, spokespersons and experts relate in the same way with the media and it is essential that there is a certain synergy so that the "translation" of our message is as faithful as possible.

Source: own elaboration.

The relationship between the spokesperson and the media

As in any political process, crisis communication must take into account the role played by the media. They are not only transmitters of information; politically, their actions can strengthen or weaken the government's position and, from a pedagogical point of view, the necessary action to raise social awareness of the crisis will require their active collaboration.

How, then, should we understand the relationship between the media and the spokesperson? In line with the reviewed theory, any communication carried out by the government in these contexts should be oriented to the generation of certainties. This implies assuming that a crisis situation generates doubts in the citizenry, of which the media will be the spokespersons, a fact that forces the relationship with the media not to be unidirectional, but dialogic (Cf. Costa-Sánchez and López-García, 2020: 5), systematically responding to their questions. This listening and response on the part of the government must be guided by scrupulous transparency, which does not give rise to the feeling that the executive is trying to avoid accountability.

The availability and resolution of doubts on the part of the government to the media must have a certain depth and be intensive. The establishment of complex processes or filters to gain access to the spokesperson of the crisis is counterproductive. The media, therefore, should be facilitated in their work of control and consultation with the Executive, not only by avoiding the aforementioned filters, but also by adapting within reason to some of its dynamics (schedules of special informative relevance, favorable formats for press conferences, etc.) and providing security in dealing with them.

Our analysis in this section will start from the assumptions established in the previous paragraphs to show a series of indicators that will allow us to determine the suitability of the relationship between government spokespersons and the media during the coronavirus crisis in Spain. The existence of bidirectionality between spokesperson and media will be measured by counting the number of appearances in which questions were accepted over the total number of appearances; the intensity of the dynamic of questions and answers, through indicators such as the average number of questions accepted per appearance, the ratio between total time of appearance and duration of question time or the interviews granted to the media. Finally, we will consider the Government's adaptation to the guidelines of the media and the facilitation of its work by looking at the compliance with the announced time of appearance and the format established for the press conferences. The indicators will be applied, on the one hand, to the appearances of the technical committee and, on the other, to those of the President of the Government himself. As a source, we have used the report Appearances on the COVID 19 coronavirus after the declaration of the state of alarm prepared by the Secretariat of State for Communication, and the videos of the press conferences uploaded to the YouTube platform by various media.

In the case of the President of the Government (see Table 3), between March 12 and April 26, there have been eleven appearances in a total of forty-five days, of which ten had question time, with an average duration of approximately one hour and about half of the time dedicated to answering the questions posed by journalists, with around nine turns per appearance. It is undeniable that there has been reciprocity in the communication between Pedro Sánchez, in his role as political spokesman of the crisis, and the media, as well as a certain depth in it. The negative side of these figures is how the abundance of presidential appearances (one every four days on average) added to their long duration can cause an effect of information saturation, which makes citizens lose interest or increase their negative assessment of the administration.

Source: own elaboration.

On the other hand, we do not include in the table the issues of the format of the question time in the appearances or the compliance with the announced time of appearance due to their difficult quantification, but they are also indicators of our study. First of all, the multiple delays in the presidential appearances before the press (in some cases they reached hours) should be highlighted. But perhaps the most notorious was the method of selecting questions at the press conferences. Criticized by various media and journalists³, this initially consisted of sending the questions via WhatsApp to a chat opened by the Secretary of State for Communication, whose head, Miguel Ángel Oliver, chose those he considered "representative of the most reiterated topics". Subsequently, these questions were formulated aloud by the Secretary of State himself at the presidential press conferences for response by Pedro Sánchez ⁴or the corresponding spokesperson. Prior knowledge of the questions allowed members of the government to plan answers and, implicitly, established an arbitrary filter through which the government could select only the most convenient questions. This system contrasted with those chosen by other opposition political leaders and governments in other countries. Following the controversy generated, the Government would modify the process of selecting questions⁵, allowing journalists to enter live via video call and thus be able to ask their questions to members of the Government, distributing the turns to speak randomly among the usual media.

For the analysis of the appearances of the Technical Committee, the sources used are the same. The first appearance analyzed was held on March 16 and the last one on April 26.

When dealing with issues more related to the day-to-day management of the pandemic (less transcendental and solemn matters), the Technical Committee appears more frequently than the President of the Government. With the exception of one day in the period analyzed, the dynamics followed was the daily appearance, with forty-one press conferences in total during the period analyzed. The average duration was around three quarters of an hour, somewhat less than the presidential appearances, and both the average length of the question time and the percentage of the same over the total time of the appearance was less than in the case of the president's appearances. However, the average number of questions answered is practically the same.

Source: own elaboration.

Once again we observe that (Table 4), indeed, the aforementioned bidirectionality between technical spokespersons and the press is present, with an appreciable level of depth (extensive and daily press conferences). The stumbling blocks in the relationship between spokespersons and the media would be, once again, in the format of questions. Even though in the case of the Technical Committee the controversy that arose with the press conferences of the Head of Government was not generated, being of a less political nature, the initial format of questions read by the Secretary of State for Communication is repeated. In the case of the Committee, there have also been, on occasions, delays in the announced time of appearance.

Before concluding this section, it is important to point out that, for a correct relationship with the media, it is advisable for spokespersons to undergo media training, as it provides communication skills when addressing the media and citizens, which are fundamental in the training of a spokesperson.

The construction of the message appears as one of the most important factors that must be trained (Cf. Sánchez, 2016, p. 183). Arguments or compilations of replies can be used, as if it were an electoral communication, and some aspects such as clarity of language, non-divagation or moderation when providing figures must be taken care of (Cf. Sánchez, 2004, p. 95).

For the success of the messages, it is also important to choose correctly the channel to be used in their broadcasting, giving priority in crisis situations to "the most direct and quickest unipersonal channels", resorting to "multiple (wheel) or individual models (messages to each of the media, including agencies)" (Moreno, 2008, p. 121). Because of the need to inform in real time and with a certain degree of immediacy, it is necessary to make live appearances. Studying the performance in this field of the Spanish Government in the Covid-19 crisis, we find that the main model chosen to convey the messages has been the live telematic press conference, for all the media, also broadcast in streaming through networks, all from the Moncloa Palace. Also noteworthy was the planning of media interviews with the various political spokespersons of the crisis.

However, during this pandemic, the Government has made use of other forms of communication that overlapped crisis and risk communication with governmental communication. The Executive has carried out an important institutional communication campaign with spots, advertising and slogans⁶ that mixed awareness of the virus (risk communication) with the political narrative that it wanted to install in society.

Communication skills and decision-making power in the spokesperson's role

Among the multiple alternatives for the crisis spokesperson, one of the questions that arises is whether the spokesperson should have a markedly communicative profile or be one of the persons with authority when it comes to deciding how to manage the crisis. This dichotomy deepens the one that has been classically discussed on technical or political spokespersonship and which we have had the opportunity to address in section 3.1.2.

In the first case, we would be talking about communication or journalism professionals, personnel with specific training or experience in the media field. The advantages are obvious; the spokesperson will know how to communicate naturally and avoid mistakes in front of the media caused by lack of experience with them. However, it is clear that someone with the profile we have indicated does not necessarily have to be an expert in the subject matter of the crisis, besides giving the impression that, by choosing a person exclusively in charge of the spokesperson function, the Government avoids having to face the crisis personally.

Regarding the election of a person with decision-making authority in crisis management, we should consider that this may be expected by the public (the decision-maker is accountable for his or her decisions), and may also generate a certain sense of security due to his or her position in the hierarchy. However, such a position will normally be political and, in contexts of democracies with high rates of disaffection, this will call into question the credibility of the spokesperson. Thus, for certain complicated situations, citizens may prefer less politically connected people, which, in addition, avoids the risk of the chosen political office "burning out". We must also distinguish political accountability from crisis spokespersonship.

In the Spanish case, the appearances made by ministers or the president himself correspond to the model of political spokesperson of the position with decision-making power ("the one who manages, explains and appears"). At the height of the crisis, the appearance of Pedro Sánchez was practically a mandatory requirement, given the magnitude of the crisis. More questionable is the appearance of different ministers beyond the Minister of Health because, although they dealt with issues related to their departments, this generated a multiplication of the number of spokespersons, which was not very efficient at a communicative level.

Regarding the appearances of Fernando Simón and other members of the Technical Committee without a political position in the Government, we must qualify the question of decision-making power. All the members of the Technical Committee occupy an important place in the hierarchy of crisis management, but the ultimate power of decision corresponds to the ministerial political level. Undoubtedly, the communication carried out by spokespersons of this profile removed (at least initially) the distrust, but there were cases of controversy caused by the lack of skill of some of the spokespersons in the relationship with the media (remember, for example, the allusion to the persecution of hoaxes against the Government by the representative of the Guardia Civil).