Systematic Literature Review of Studies on Communication and COVID-19 from 2020 to 2022: An Agenda-Setting Perspective

The COVID-19 pandemic that commenced early 2020 took the world by storm with its unexpected arrival. As of September 2024, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported COVID-19 cumulative cases totalling 776 million and cumulative deaths at 7.1 million. Several research studies have been conducted globally on COVID-19 and communication that saw the agenda setting of foci points in articles through their findings. The articles examined were published from 2020 to 2022 which was the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and were extracted from SCOPUS, Web of Science, and the Google Scholar platforms. It appears that a systematic review of the literature from the agenda setting perspective had not been carried out previously thus creating a research gap. The study was guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and was analysed thematically. There were two research questions guiding the study: the first focused on the research methods used in the 76 studies on COVID-19 and Communication selected from 2020 to 2022, and the second research question focused on their findings. The most salient theme for the first research question is Quantitative research and for the second research question, Effective communication strategy during COVID-19. The findings underscore the importance of the use of quantitative research and effective communication strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Keywords: COVID-19, communication, agenda setting, systematic review, meta-analyses.