Intercultural Communication Breakdown: COVID-19 Pandemic Response in Western and African Contexts
Overview
This essay examines poor intercultural communication between Western and African cultures during the COVID-19 pandemic, analyzing how cultural differences, religious beliefs, and historical distrust have created divergent interpretations of disease spread, prevention, and vaccination. The paper argues that Western reliance on empirical evidence conflicts fundamentally with African dependence on cultural and religious frameworks, exacerbated by confirmation bias and skepticism toward Western institutions.
What this essay covers
- Introduction establishing communication as basis of human understanding and cultural differences affecting the process
- Analysis of Tanzania's COVID-19 denial and African vaccine hesitancy as examples of poor intercultural communication
- Theoretical framework comparing Western evidence-based communication with African cultural-religious communication patterns
- Discussion of confirmation bias and cultural study theory explaining selective information processing
- Reference to elaboration likelihood theory and hypodermic needle theory as potential solutions
Preview
Poor Communication
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Poor Communication
Communication is the basis of human understanding as it gives people the platform to agree, disagree or remain neutral. The difference in cultures affects the communication process. Cultures hold different values that might clash at some point, hence interfering with a communication process's quality. The current COVID 19 pandemic is an excellent example that demonstrates poor intercultural communication. African and Western cultures have had a different interpretations of the pandemic. This essay explores the poor intercultural communication between the Western and African cultures based on the current COVID 19 pandemic.
The western civilization has had a significant influence on the African culture because of the civilization, but the COVID 19 pandemic seems to interfere with the status quo. There has been poor communication agreement on the spread, prevention, and vaccination of the disease. The communication patterns active in this example are based on the difference in civilization and cultural beliefs. Civilization effects have had a mixed reception in the African continent, with most of them believing that Western influence is for individual benefits and not universal empowerment. For this reason, most parts of Africa think that the western world wants to take advantage of the COVID 19 epidemic to exploit them. Tanzania, an East African country, has held that it is COVID 19 free because God has intervened ("Coronavirus in Tanzania: The country that's rejecting the vaccine," 2021).