Podcasting public health information during Covid

Agência Mural in Brazil used different types of local media to convey important information during the Covid-19 pandemic. Izabela Moi from Agência Mura says:  

If you’re there in the territory, you know what’s missing, you know what works. I’ll give you an example from Agência Mural. 

At the start of the pandemic, everyone was discussing information: [people were asking] how were people going to survive, there was no vaccine, no-one was talking about masks and so on. 

The staff from Mural were very worried about our audience, because they knew their families, their friends, and nobody was going to be able to stay at home. Everyone was doing essential jobs. The year everyone stopped, these people didn’t stop, they carried on doing their jobs. They had to protect themselves. 

They didn’t have the money to buy information from newspaper paywalls … The information had to reach them. The staff said: “This information has to arrive every day via WhatsApp and audio.” 

We did an audio podcast every day for a year, during 2020. The number of messages saying “thank you, because I can’t read,” “thank you, because this goes to my family group chat, my friends’ group chat.” And everyone said the information was useful.