From Bondi to Fairfield: NSW COVID-19 press conferences,health messaging,and social inequality

Abstract

The use of media sources increases exponentially during a health crisis or disaster. Similarly, digital health information and misinformation can spread quickly through social media. From the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the press conference has been one of the federal, state, and territory governments’ key outlets for providing updates, containing misinformation, reassuring constituents, and articulating public health measures. This article focuses on NSW press conferences relating to the major Delta outbreak in Australia. The article looks at the press conferences as they pertain to the NSW government's controversial targeting of the lower socioeconomic and ethnically diverse south-west ‘hotspot’ or ‘LGA of concern’, Fairfield, which turned the LGA into an area of intense policing. We argue strategic manoeuvring in the press conferences, through the individualisation of responsibility and blame shifting, formed part of the NSW government's attempts to minimise political fallout.