Domesticating death: The necro-politics of COVID-19 data visualization in UK government press briefings

How do governments visually communicate information about policy issues—comprising data, evidence, and preferred positions—and what do these usages reveal about these actors’ political strategies, particularly in moments of crisis when the scale and scope of relevant information is unclear? A large body of work examines the interface of evidence and policy in several settings, revealing at least three modes in which governments (including the bureaucratic arms of states) use evidence: (1) a rational mode, in which ministers prioritize quality research that helps them to develop and evaluate policy interventions; (2) a boundedly rational mode, in which evidence selection is also informed by previous experience and administrative constraints; and (3) a political mode, in which governments select and use evidence in strategic ways to legitimize their own goals, agendas, and actions to themselves and voters. Building on this, we contribute to theoretical and empirical understanding of the uses of evidence in crises by focusing on the UK government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic as evidenced in its own national daily press briefings—an exceptionally regular and visible format—during the first wave of 2020. Specifically, we couple quantitative content and changepoint analysis with qualitative semiotic methods to study all 79 sets of slides used between March 30 and June 23 when briefings were held. By doing so, we trace the dynamics of visual elements (both in terms of their quantities and content) within the slides to identify two distinct phases of the initial response: an emergency management phase that focused on communicating knowledge about the pandemic in a boundedly rational manner; and a legitimization phase that aimed to explain and justify the decisions of the government. Our results reveal how the UK government “domesticated death” by visual means during its pandemic response in 2020, which has implications for understanding how governments leverage evidence as they respond to novel crises.