Effectiveness of Health Risk Communication in Oman: Covid-19 Official Discourse as a Case Study

In Oman, there is a great deal of government attention on various aspects of health risk management such as logistics, policies, planning, strategies and control. However, there is very little attention on researching the role of language in framing and constructing the discourse used to communicate health risk to the public. This research project, therefore, aims to assess the effectiveness of Oman official Arabic discourse on Covid-19 pandemic by examining how this discourse is linguistically structured, conceptually framed, and discursively constructed to ensure the effectiveness of risk communication during times of disease outbreak. This research project will adopt a mixed methods approach combining qualitative and quantitative data. Archival data such as official statements and press conferences of the Supreme Committee tasked with tackling developments resulting from Covid-19 will be collected and transcribed. Elicited data from questionnaires, focus groups and semi-structured interviews will be collected. Both the archival and elicited data will be analyzed using an array of analytical approaches. These include a textual approach to address the linguistic structuring component of this research project, a conceptual metaphor approach to address the conceptual framing component, a critical discourse analysis approach to address the discourse construction component of the research project and a descriptive statistics approach to address the elicited data. This project will assist relevant government bodies in adopting best practices in risk communication and in developing risk communication guidelines in Oman. Also, it will contribute to the creation of a research base for risk discourse in Oman.