COVID-19 communication campaigns in Southeast Asia countries with multilingual communities: A scoping review

BackgroundThe complexities of multilingualism in COVID-19 communication campaigns across Southeast Asia's multicultural countries remain unexplored.ObjectiveThis paper aims to map and summarize the development, implementation, and evaluation of COVID-19 preventive behavior and vaccination campaigns in the region.MethodsUtilizing the PRISMA-ScR framework, major databases were searched for relevant articles published between January 2020 and March 2025, focusing on the content and delivery of COVID-19 communication campaigns within multilingual Southeast Asian countries.ResultsTwenty articles were retrieved, most of which originated from Indonesia (n = 11), followed by Vietnam (n = 3), Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore (n = 2 each). Studies on prevention (n = 13) outnumbered those on vaccination campaigns (n = 5). Of the 86 described campaign materials, posters (n = 63) were the most prevalent media type, primarily developed by the government (n = 60). Most materials used the country's official language for the campaigns, with 49 for prevention and 27 for vaccination. Channels varied; government social media dominated in Malaysia, while physical public spaces were most common elsewhere. The strategic implementation of multilingual and culturally specific communication emerged as a key opportunity, in contrast to the major challenge of the widespread anti-vaccine misinformation on social media.ConclusionsThe reported communication materials were largely characterized by an urgent, mass-reach approach using a country's official language, which endangered linguistic minorities. Crucially, this review highlights a systemic mishap in campaign assessment, marked by a near-total absence of evidence-based impact data, hindering the evaluation of effective strategies for public health outcomes.