Political discourses of the pandemic in the United States: a comparative study of the causal stories of COVID-19 in Alabama and Iowa

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic presented unprecedented challenges globally, necessitating quick policy responses from governments worldwide. This thesis examines the role of political discourse in forming and justifying policies during crises, focusing on the early first-wave responses of the U.S. states of Alabama and Iowa. Using Deborah Stone's (1989) causal stories framework, the study identifies four causal story types: intentional, accidental, inadvertent, and mechanical. Through qualitative content analysis of public communications by Governors Kay Ivey and Kim Reynolds, this thesis explores the relationship between crisis communication and policy stringency, highlighting divergences between theoretical expectations and empirical findings. Contrary to expectation, the intentional causal story was overwhelmingly dominant across both states, irrespective of policy stringency. This suggests that leaders may employ intentional narratives universally in crises to convey a sense of control and action. Also unexpectedly, the accidental causal story appeared more frequently in Alabama, a state with higher policy stringency, than in Iowa. The inadvertent causal story, while limited to Governor Ivey’s rhetoric, emerged earlier than initially anticipated. Lastly, while mechanical causal stories were deemed unlikely to appear in the theoretical framework, they nonetheless appeared in Alabama through religious invocations, adding an unforeseen dimension to the analysis. The results of the analysis contribute to the existing literature through the framework of how political leaders use certain narratives to legitimize policy decisions. Focusing on regional executives fills a gap in the literature left by the predominant study of national executives. These insights deepen the understanding of crisis communication by executives while highlighting the potential for future research to investigate broader contexts, mixed-methods approaches, and comparative analyses across political systems and party affiliations. The study’s limitations in scope reveal possible avenues for future research into the dynamics of crisis communication, testing the universality of intentional causal stories indicated in this study and the conditions under which accidental, mechanical, or inadvertent causal stories might emerge.