Walking a tightrope: The accounts of U.S. state level senior communication officials on promoting trust and transparency in the COVID-19 pandemic

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, governments and health agencies were responsible for communicating vital information to the public. To effectively communicate the severity of the situation and to encourage the public to follow recommendations, best practices for public communication during emergencies often emphasize two objectives: building trust and being transparent. Doing so can require communicators to “walk a tightrope,” where the successful path of health communication is narrow and requires balancing multiple communication objectives without going too far towards any particular one. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 14 United States (U.S.) state-level senior communication officials who were working in their roles during the COVID-19 pandemic, we examine three challenges to effective communication that they navigated by “walking a tightrope.” First, participants articulated the challenge of communicating the downsides of a burdensome policy while also trying to sell the policy to their constituents. Second, participants described the benefits of being transparent about unknowns and mistakes made in the pandemic response while simultaneously maintaining credibility and encouraging compliance. Third, participants acknowledged that data and science were needed to communicate policies and policy rationale, but they cautioned against over-communicating and causing confusion in the public. Throughout these discussions, we focus on how the alignment and tensions between these goals and the values of trust and transparency. We conclude by considering how these insights can better inform public health communication education efforts and practices beyond COVID-19.