Kelindan Noise dan Voice menjadi Choice: Komunikasi Sains dalam Implementasi Kebijakan Berbasis Bukti Penanganan Pandemi COVID-19 di Indonesia

Handling the COVID-19 pandemic is a challenge for all countries, including Indonesia. Each country has a strategy according to its capacity. Likewise, each region with various potentials and limitations in Indonesia creates different policy strategies. The elaboration of policy contextualization issues is explained through several concepts: scientific communication, evidence-based policy, the valley of death and policy innovation, and knowledge brokers and expert citizens. These key concepts are strengthened by literature research and qualitative-based field research complemented by surveys and interview to strengthen the argument. The handling of the pandemic study in Indonesia is complemented by information at the local level, which is considered capable of representing the picture of handling pandemics on a national scale. Researchers chose Depok City and Surakarta City as the locus of deepening information by surveiing the general public and health workers. Researchers also conducted in-depth interviews with science activists, health educators and health workers at the national level and in both cities. Two important things were found in this study. First, there are formal non-legal aspects in policy implementation that need to be accommodated to maximize a policy in addition to guidelines and rules. Grindle (2017) suggests that policy is not only about the regulation or text, but also highly context-dependent. Second, what is also important and has not been widely disclosed is the role of science communication in the policy. As Hoover (2018) and Zhang (2021) explain, the process of bridging science or research to policy is the critical role of good science communication in translating the ideas to be realized. Theoretically, the novelty in this research is the role of science communication which can bridge the implementation of contextual policies. The city of Depok and the city of Surakarta as representatives of Indonesia are better able to handle the pandemic well. The role of expert citizens is a node in optimizing their scientific communication, both to the government as policymakers directly to the public who must carry out these policies well, and through volunteer networks. Thus, the government and the public need to receive and construct scientific information both produced from scientific studies (hard science) and social humanities (soft science) as the basis for handling the pandemic. The attitude to handling the pandemic must be strengthened with collaborations across institutions and scientific backgrounds.