Over the last 14 months, since the COVID-19 virus was first de­tect­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Gov­ern­ment has been plead­ing with the pop­u­la­tion to do their part in curb­ing the spread of the virus.

There have many cas­es where peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed and charged for not heed­ing those calls- for of­fences rang­ing from op­er­at­ing busi­ness­es that were sup­posed to be closed to not wear­ing face masks in pub­lic.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has been crit­i­cised by some for his ap­proach to warn­ing the pop­u­la­tion against breach­ing the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions.

One in­ter­na­tion­al Cri­sis Com­mu­ni­ca­tion spe­cial­ist said these breach­es may be be­cause peo­ple do not feel re­spect­ed when these mes­sages are put out.

Dr Re­bec­ca Rice is an as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Neva­da, Las Ve­gas.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Rice said re­spect is an im­por­tant as­pect of cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

“One thing I would say about ask­ing the pub­lic to take ac­tion through a cri­sis sit­u­a­tion is that show­ing em­pa­thy is re­al­ly im­por­tant, sham­ing or em­bar­rass­ing peo­ple can ac­tu­al­ly not be an ef­fec­tive tech­nique when com­mu­ni­cat­ing with them,” Rice said.

She said peo­ple are more like­ly to re­sist mes­sages if they feel like they are be­ing shamed.

One way to com­bat this is to give peo­ple ‘ac­tion’ steps they can take to still feel a part of their com­mu­ni­ties while stay­ing apart.

Rice said while it is im­por­tant to let the pop­u­la­tion know how im­por­tant it is to stay at home, it is equal­ly im­por­tant for them not to feel iso­lat­ed at this time.

She said an­oth­er way is to hu­man­ise med­ical da­ta.

“Be­cause this is such a long cri­sis, I think we’ve all got­ten so used to hear­ing the num­bers and I think it’s hard to un­der­stand what the num­bers mean every day... so any­way that you can per­son­alise the cri­sis da­ta us­ing things like sto­ries, ex­am­ples and anec­dotes are re­al­ly help­ful.”

She said an­oth­er un­for­tu­nate as­pect of a high death toll is that peo­ple can have dif­fi­cul­ty re­lat­ing to case num­bers and its im­pact on their own lives.

“I think un­for­tu­nate­ly es­pe­cial­ly with the death toll be­ing so high, we sort of for­get that those num­bers are peo­ple so telling sto­ries about the peo­ple who were im­pact­ed is an im­por­tant way to per­suade peo­ple and re­mind them that this is about peo­ple who are like them and peo­ple who they could know and this could im­pact them.”

Rice said while pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty laws may ham­per this, the Gov­ern­ment can try to part­ner with those fam­i­lies who have lost loved ones to the virus to get the mes­sag­ing to the pub­lic.

She said this way, no laws are breached and the pub­lic can have a clear­er un­der­stand­ing of how COVID-19 af­fects peo­ple like them.

“I think that build­ing those re­la­tion­ships is an­oth­er re­al­ly im­por­tant part of cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It’s not just about what you say and what you send out but it al­so about what you lis­ten to and what kind of per­spec­tives you take in­to ac­count,” Rice said.