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This book features chapters that reflect state-of-the art discussion by contributors who propose cutting-edge analysis on the topic of science communication involving extreme events. Authors were commissioned to explore the most salient issues in science communication contexts. Each of the chapters focuses on events and processes facing long into the future. In meeting this challenge, these volumes will feature a line of analysis that connects communication science issues, public policy, education, and the pandemic into a coherent narrative.

The authors created unique perspectives from which to portray these contexts and their accompanying challenges. Each chapter signifies the most up-to-date research in these areas with insightful ideas of where future research and best practices should proceed in the future. Like other recent scholarly books we have published (O’Hair, 2018; O’Hair & O’Hair, 2020), original research findings are offered from ongoing research programs, and in other chapters, unique frameworks and models are presented that unpack constituent elements of complex processes, and “casting them into discernable designs worthy of consideration by researchers, practitioners, and policy makers” (O’Hair, 2018, p. 4). The importance of this work is its ability to bring together the best scholarship in science communication research.

Just as importantly, this book is envisioned to serve as ignition for future work in science communication and to serve as a text for an increasing number of college courses in science communication. It is hoped that this book will nurture additional interest in many types of communication studies and offer connections between communication research and others engaged in science and educational contexts.

Each chapter was commissioned and reviewed with the ensuing guidelines in mind:

 Significant issue/problem?

 Theoretical grounding?

 Recent exemplars included?

 Practical and impactful implications?

 Implications (going forward)?

 New directions offered?

 Unique contribution to science communication research?

Communicating Science in Times of Crisis: COVID-19 Pandemic is intended for multiple audiences, with the primary audiences being those quite familiar to scholarly publishers and academic researchers. The book should attract interest among communication scholars and researchers focusing on science communication. In addition, it is hoped that seminars in science communication, crisis management, policy management, leadership studies, and even medicine will find the book attractive as a primary or secondary text. A third audience is likely to be found in main campus libraries and public libraries as well as libraries situated at health sciences centers. This project follows in the footsteps of other scholarly books, which have become a vital part of the academic and professional contributions of the communication disciplines. The chapters contained herein offer the opportunity to integrate ideas that are on the vanguard of science communication. The chapters throughout the book are organized through four parts: (a) conceptualizing communication science and COVID-19, (b) promoting health and well-being, (c) advancing models of information and media, (d) and examining policy and leadership. These chapters are employed as part of the overall strategy we lay out in offering an approach for using communication science more effectively during times of crisis, in particular the pandemic of COVID-19.

In the following sections of this chapter, we develop a sketch of three interlocking concepts that facilitate a path for managing the COVID-19 pandemic. We start with a discussion about the essential nature of science communication and the known and unknown complexities of moving science into the public realm where it can be leveraged. In a following section, we confront an inescapable truth of human society—pandemics. It is here that we peel back the veneer of dangerous illnesses that have always confronted our societies and those that in recent times have served as the harbinger of what we confront today and what will likely be in future generations. The section that follows is meant to highlight how communication science can serve as a strategy for mitigating the horrendous effects of COVID-19 and perhaps other viruses confronting us in the future.