Communicating awareness about COVID-19 through songs: An example from Ghana

January 18, 2021

Rachel G.A. Thompson, Jerry John Nutor, Julene K. Johnson

Frontiers in Public Health

Thompson et al. studied the use of songs for spreading knowledge about COVID-19 in Ghana by searching YouTube for songs and conducting a thematic analysis of the lyrics. All 28 songs included in the study contained information about how to prevent COVID-19 and most of the songs were in multiple languages. The eight main themes discovered were as follows: “public health guidelines”, “COVID-19 is real and not a hoax”, “COVID-19 is infectious”, “prayer as a method to stop the virus”, “emotional responses and disruption of everyday activities”, “verbally expelling the virus”, “call for unity and collective efforts”, and “inspiring hope”. The authors noted that songs can be used to quickly share information about public health crises and examining song lyrics can be helpful for understanding attitudes towards COVID-19.

Thompson RGA, Nutor JJ, Johnson JK. Communicating Awareness About COVID-19 Through Songs: An Example From Ghana. Frontiers in Public Health 2021; 8(853).

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