IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jriskr/v23y2020i7-8p1007-1020.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mismanagement of Covid-19: lessons learned from Italy

Author

Listed:
  • Maria Laura Ruiu

Abstract

Maria Laura Ruiu is lecturer at Northumbria University (Newcastle upon Tyne). She has recently completed her second PhD in Social Sciences (Northumbria University). She also acted as post-doctoral researcher at the Desertification Research Centre (University of Sassari, Italy) investigating the adaptive capacity of some communities to climate change impact. This paper analyses the first phases of the Covid-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak management in Italy by exploring the combination of political, scientific, media and public responses. A lack of coordination between political and scientific levels, and between institutional claim-makers and the media, suggests a mismanagement of the crisis during the first phases of the outbreak. The outbreak management suffered from the five communication weaknesses identified by Reynolds, related to i) mixed messages from multiple messengers; ii) delay in releasing information; iii) paternalistic attitudes; iv) lack of immediate reaction to rumours; and v) political confusion. This supports that the communication of uncertainty around an unknown threat should be accompanied by both political and scientific cohesion. However, both political and scientific dysfunctions caused the failure of several government efforts to contain the outbreak. This paper contributes towards informing policymakers on some lessons learned from the management of the Covid-19 in one of the most affected countries in the world. The Italian case study offers the opportunity for other countries to improve the management of the outbreak by limiting the spread of both chaos and panic.

Suggested Citation

  • Maria Laura Ruiu, 2020. "Mismanagement of Covid-19: lessons learned from Italy," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(7-8), pages 1007-1020, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:23:y:2020:i:7-8:p:1007-1020
    DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2020.1758755
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669877.2020.1758755
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13669877.2020.1758755?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Robert Krzysztofik & Iwona Kantor-Pietraga & Tomasz Spórna, 2021. "Multidimensional Conditions of the First Wave of the COVID-19 Epidemic in the Trans-Industrial Region. An Example of the Silesian Voivodeship in Poland," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-17, April.
    2. Hannah Baker & Shauna Concannon & Matthias Meller & Katie Cohen & Alice Millington & Samuel Ward & Emily So, 2022. "COVID-19 and science advice on the ‘Grand Stage’: the metadata and linguistic choices in a scientific advisory groups’ meeting minutes," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-16, December.
    3. Wignyo Adiyoso, 2022. "Assessing Governments’ Emergency Responses to the COVID-19 Outbreak Using a Social Network Analysis (SNA)," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(2), pages 21582440211, April.
    4. Harshana Weligampola & Lakshitha Ramanayake & Yasiru Ranasinghe & Gayanthi Ilangarathna & Neranjan Senarath & Bhagya Samarakoon & Roshan Godaliyadda & Vijitha Herath & Parakrama Ekanayake & Janaka Eka, 2023. "Pandemic Simulator: An Agent-Based Framework with Human Behavior Modeling for Pandemic-Impact Assessment to Build Sustainable Communities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(14), pages 1-26, July.
    5. Kovanic, Martin & Steuer, Max, 2023. "Fighting against COVID-19: With or without politics?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 337(C).
    6. Margarida Rodrigues & Mário Franco & Nuno Sousa & Rui Silva, 2021. "Reviewing COVID-19 Literature on Business Management: What It Portends for Future Research?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-21, May.
    7. Giliberto Capano & Michael Howlett & Darryl S L Jarvis & M Ramesh, 2022. "Long-term policy impacts of the coronavirus: normalization, adaptation, and acceleration in the post-COVID state [Racial, economic, and health inequality and COVID-19 infection in the United States," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 41(1), pages 1-12.
    8. John Hogan & Michael Howlett & Mary Murphy, 2022. "Re-thinking the coronavirus pandemic as a policy punctuation: COVID-19 as a path-clearing policy accelerator [Punctuating the equilibrium: An application of policy theory to COVID-19]," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 41(1), pages 40-52.
    9. Merike Kolga, 2023. "Engaging “Care” Behaviors in Support of Employee and Organizational Wellbeing through Complexity Leadership Theory," Merits, MDPI, vol. 3(2), pages 1-10, June.
    10. Vicente Javier Clemente-Suárez & Eduardo Navarro-Jiménez & Manuel Jimenez & Alberto Hormeño-Holgado & Marina Begoña Martinez-Gonzalez & Juan Camilo Benitez-Agudelo & Natalia Perez-Palencia & Carmen Ce, 2021. "Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic in Public Mental Health: An Extensive Narrative Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-21, March.
    11. Carlos Fernandez-Llatas & Niels Martin & Owen Johnson & Marcos Sepulveda & Emmanuel Helm & Jorge Munoz-Gama, 2022. "Building Process-Oriented Data Science Solutions for Real-World Healthcare," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(14), pages 1-5, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:23:y:2020:i:7-8:p:1007-1020. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJRR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.