Manga-Based Risk Communication for the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study of Storytelling that Incorporates a Cultural Context

"What is needed for the storytelling approach to work effectively for risk communication in a crisis?"

Comics have been used as a visual storytelling medium for scientific communication. Manga, a type of comic book developed in Japan after World War II, is deeply rooted in Japanese culture but is spreading all over the world. This article explores a project using manga-based messaging for risk communication on COVID-19, describing the collaboration between a group of experts and a popular manga artist. It emerged from the COVID-19 SciComm Forum, which one of the paper's authors launched in March 2020 to provide an online platform for science communication practitioners and researchers, STS (science and technology studies) researchers, sociologists, physicians, and psychologists seeking to collect information and exchange ideas about strategic communication during the pandemic.

Using a collaborative software app called Slack, members of the SciComm Forum communicated about COVID-19 with popular manga artist/writer Yuki Suetsugu. She is the artist behind Chihayafuru, a serial manga that began in December 2007and grew to a circulation of 24 million or more. Set in a typical modern Japanese school, Chihayafuru portrays ordinary young people who are passionate about karuta, a traditional Japanese card game or "mind sport" - with the characters' team spirit and concern for each other as the main themes. One of the game's features in that, unlike in general sports, men and women often compete in the same tournament. The Chihayafuru series is published in BE-LOVE, a magazine for women in their thirties and forties. There are also many young fans due in part to the success of the Chihayafuru TV anime series and live-action movie series in which many popular young actors appeared. However, Chihayafuru has succeeded in gaining a wide fan base for both genders and various age groups. Thus, it seemed possible for a wide range of age groups to identify with certain characters, and for those characters to naturally send out messages on preventing the spread of a pandemic in ways that require social solidarity and consideration for others.

The paper next explains how this collaborative project unfolded. First, two of the authors opened a Slack thread with Yuki Suetsugu in the COVID-19 SciComm Forum, in which three STS researchers, one physician, one freelance science communicator, and two science communicators from a research institute and a university participated. Through a process outlined here, eight manga-style message illustrations were created. For example, one contains an illustration of a fierce battle between the protagonist Chihaya and her rival Shinobu to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. Suetsugu posted the images on her Twitter account, and then members of the SciComm Forum retweeted and shared Suetsugu's tweets on Twitter and Facebook. The meta-message and hashtag #Do Your Part - Let's prevent infection by yourself can be found at the bottom of all the images/postings. This message is compatible with the world of Chihayafuru, which emphasises themes of teamwork and each player's role and responsibility in karuta competitions.

The authors suggest that manga-based scientific storytelling can tackle current, real-world problems by overlapping with real-life situations. In one example, Chihaya is crying over the cancellation of the Karuta high school championship. In fact, that tournament, in the real world, was cancelled due to pandemic-related restrictions. Therefore, the reader "knows" how sad Chihaya will be about the cancellation of the tournament and "considers how her family should treat the heartbroken Chihaya and empower her within the 'new normal.' This social context might create deep empathy and awareness among students and their families in the same situation. Because Chihayafuru is a realistic work, it gives readers the sense that we are living in the same world as Chihaya and the other characters."

The article explores some of the challenges that had to be worked out in crafting the themes in the co-creation, such as those around gender, "self-restraint policing", and the deficit model of science communication. For example, it was initially suggested in the SciComm Forum that, in one image, Chihaya (female) might happen to meet Haruka (female), who was playing with three children in the park. However, it was pointed out that the design unconsciously reproduced the current situation where the burden of housework and childrearing is placed solely on women. Therefore, Suetsugu changed the image so that Haruka (female) meets Akihiro, a male teammate with many younger brothers and cousins, and a stereotyped description was avoided.

The public response to the project, facilitated by social media (e.g., by Suetsugu's 88,000 followers), has been "well received by fans and many RTs (retweets) and comments were made in a short time." To some extent, the message has also spread to non-Japanese-speaking fans.

In reflecting on the project, the authors note that collaborating with a popular manga artist allowed them "to create stories that could build a consensus in a heterogeneous group of experts and to quickly gain a deep understanding and empathy from a wide audience. This technique could be particularly useful for risk communication during an emergency, such as this pandemic, because the timing and reactions to different local situations is important." Based on their experiences, they offer lessons learned for risk communication during a crisis, such as the importance of engaging a wide range of ages, ensuring a gender balance, and including people in various specialised fields in active (forum) discussions, with the common goal of contributing to risk communication for COVID-19 countermeasures.

In conclusion: "People interpret and use risk information filtered through the context of their own lives. For this reason, it is important to communicate risk in a contextual and meaningful way. In this project, manga-based 'stories' definitely contributed to this point by integrating social meaning and legitimacy within the local context into a scientific message about risk communication..."