Delegitimizing Rural Public Health Departments: How Decaying Local News Ecologies, Misinformation, and Radicalization Undermine Community Storytelling Networks

Abstract

This article considers the public communication challenges that health officials in rural America faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. I analyze the role that public health officials played in communicating news and information about the pandemic in 29 rural counties in Illinois. These officials were challenged by a diminished reporting capacity among local media outlets, and by a political radicalization of local Republicans, who no longer regarded local media as trusted nodes in local storytelling networks. I find that while public health officials can help fill a community’s critical information needs about risk and emergency, the public’s take-up of this information depends on sociocultural and political forces that shape the broader communication context.