Artículo científico: la comunicación de crisis del gobierno de Ecuador en el contexto de la pandemia covid-19, durante los meses marzo/abril de 2020

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic caused the collapse of life as we have known it until now, forcing governments to adopt health, economic, political and communication measures to combat the virus and safeguard the population. This article characterizes the Crisis Communication used by the government of Ecuador in press conferences, interviews and reports, during the boom period of the pandemic: March / April 2020. For this, 26 audiovisual products were analyzed from 13 from March 2020 to April 29, 2020, among them, 13 correspondence to national media: 8 reports and 5 reports to the nation by the Government; and 13 correspondence to international media: 7 reports and 6 interviews. The results show a chaotic handling of the crisis, marked by disorganization, disarticulation between the central government and municipalities, lack of coherence, lateness, lack of leadership, inability to generate and follow a clear strategy, inaccuracies in statistics, corruption, and the abysmal distance between discourses and reality.