The impact of dramatized communications on public support for lockdown measures

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic will long remain an extraordinary case for the social sciences, as it provides quasi-ideal conditions for the analysis of socio-political mechanisms in contexts of extreme crisis and disruption of the social order. It is in fact in these exceptional circumstances characterized by uncertainty, fear and the loss of traditional references that the impact of communications is potentially highest; but these contexts also enhance the possibility that reality directly experienced by citizens in their everyday life imposes itself regardless of communication efforts. Through a survey experiment conducted in 5 European counties at the end of the first lockdowns, we find that the governments’ handling of the COVID-19 pandemic tended to be more accepted by voters of the parties in office, especially in the presence of a dramatized frame emphasizing possible human losses, both in terms of jobs and lives. In the context of a harsh health and economic reality, however, the impact of communication proved to be limited.