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Abstract
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This article refers to:
The PHERCC Matrix. An Ethical Framework for Planning, Governing, and Evaluating Risk and Crisis Communication in the Context of Public Health Emergencies:
Spitale, G., F. Germani, and N. Biller-Andorno. 2024. The PHERCC matrix. An ethical framework for planning, governing, and evaluating risk and crisis communication in the context of public health emergencies. The American Journal of Bioethics 24 (4):67-82. doi:10.1080/15265161.2023.2201191.
The ethical restatement of the "risk and crisis communication in public health emergency" (PHERCC) matrix by Spitale et al. (Citation2024) is a step up from mainstream approaches like the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) model for its attempt to enhance communicative effectiveness through the adoption of openness, transparency, inclusivity, understandability and privacy as processual principles. As they explain, the implementation of these principles helps to imbue dynamic responsiveness (and people-centredness more broadly) in risk and crisis communication (RCC), whilst ensuring respect for autonomy of affected individuals and fairness across the multiple publics that these individuals compose. Instructively, Spitale et al. (Citation2024) illustrate how an ethically directed PHERCC matrix could support the critical evaluation of censorship in infodemic management and guide the development of resilience building measures that better illicit trust.
While justice is, I think, correctly identified as the main driving moral value of PHERCC actions, I proffer three reasons as to why a wider reading of this principle is necessary. First, it is necessary to look beyond justice as fairness in order to appreciate the different types of injustices that preclude or limit participatory processes, especially for vulnerable and marginalized populations. Second, the PHERCC matrix should not be seen as subsisting apart from other justice frameworks, which are in many ways coterminous. In view of the increasing uptake and utilization of digital technologies in RCC, I draw attention to data justice (as equity) frameworks that are applicable. Third, justice as equity could bridge ethical deliberation with rights-based reasoning often applied to address the issues that Spitale et al. (Citation2024) identify as open. ...
Language: en |