How pandemic detective narratives potentiate and debilitate trust

Abstract Never in modern times has public health communication been so critical yet so fragile. When the first COVID-19 case was detected in Taiwan, Taiwanese health officials readily embedded pandemic detective narratives within public announcements to alert and reassure citizens about the government’s preparedness. Such narratives are subject to revision because of challenges from the press, thereby inviting uncertainty as to who is telling the truth. In this study, I draw on the notions of narrative construction and circulation to analyze video recordings of daily press conferences about COVID-19 in Taiwan and trace how the Taiwanese media covered the island’s first COVID-19 case from diagnosis to recovery. Along the way, pandemic detective narratives were multimodally told, untold, and retold. The health officials’ narrative (re)entextualizations conflicted with those of the press and the person with COVID-19. This conflict stemmed from the different means of narrative construction and circulation that each narrator utilized to make sense of the illness experience. The differences suggest a tension between asserting control and conveying authenticity that intertextually potentiates and debilitates trust.