The Mediacracy – 2

Looking back on the corona policy, it is stated that the government “listened to the population” in 2021. The broad support for large-scale vaccination campaigns is presented as a spontaneous social call, to which policy responded adequately.

Following on from the previous articles, which respectively discuss the institutional protection of interpretation frameworks¹Article: The dilemma of anti-institutional science and the central role of media in it²Article: The Mediacracy 1 were analyzed, we will further discuss how that theory was applied in practice. In light of the introductory articles mentioned, the social support that facilitated the implementation of proposed policy in 2021 can be seen as the result of systematic investments in public communication and behavioral management in 2020.

The central distinction is therefore temporal and analytical:

• 2020 acted as the construction phase: infrastructure, measurements, segmentation and narrative formation.
• 2021 acted as the outputfase: visible support, norm conformity and policy legitimacy.

Information provision and behavioral preparation

From the spring of 2020, government communication around COVID-19 was explicitly linked to behavioral objectives. This is evident, among other things, from the structural use of behavioral research, such as the ongoing one Corona Behavior Monitor of the RIVM, in which risk perception, trust, perception of norms and (later) willingness to be vaccinated were periodically measured.³Influencing the behavior of citizens organized on a large scale. Substack Trees and Forest^{, 4}The orchestration of a coup by the NCTV Substack Trees and Forest

These measurements were not merely descriptive. They acted as input for iterative adjustment of communication, with cycles of approximately two weeks. Public perception was therefore not only observed, but prepared and shaped with a view to future policy choices.

All this took place when vaccination (which was scheduled for 2021) was already positioned as the only way out of the pandemic. The investments in 2020 must therefore be understood analytically as creating conditions.

Investing in a mindset

De uniforme loyaliteitsboodschap was overal herkenbaar: "Samen krijgen we corona eronder", later aangescherpt tot "Vaccineren doe je voor de ander". Samen, dus. De nationale media brachten vanaf het begin dan ook een eenduidige boodschap ("met één mond praten"⁵"Als de angst zo groot is moeten we toch wel proberen om met één mond te praten [...] Ja dat vind ik zeker!" Pieter Klok on Radio 1) om dat "samen" maar niet te verstoren. Zo werden ook quasi-wetenschappelijke, niet-onderbouwde opvattingen collectief ondersteund in de gezamenlijke kwaliteitsjournalistiek⁶Article: Where is the science?.

Main theme theme: threat and solution. Covid-19 was a life-threatening disease, which was not only clear in the news, where Chinese people suddenly fell dead. This was followed by programs such as “Frontbericht” (NPO, spring 2020), “In the eye of the storm” (BNNVARA, broadcast at the end of 2020), “Frontline” – (Human/NPO) and of course the menacing statistics that were shudderingly discussed everywhere. Later in the year, a few months before the start of the injection campaigns, the solution was identified. Some examples:

• "We can only really get back to normal when there is a vaccine. Vaccination is our only structural way out of this crisis." (Mark Rutte).
• “The cabinet sees vaccination as the only real way out of the corona crisis.” (Volkskrant).
• “All hope now rests on the vaccine” (The Telegraph).
• “Vaccination only way to return to normal” (NRC).
• “the only way to get the virus under control” - Experts such as Ab Osterhaus, Diederik Gommers and Ernst Kuipers paraphrased the message evening after evening in the various talk shows.

(Aanvankelijk was "Build back better" ook een internationaal geliefde slogan, maar die bleef beperkt tot WEF-leaders⁷Youtube compilation Build back better (1m 55s) and blew over quickly⁸At the time, the WEF was still framed by the media as a social talking shop, in which only conspiracy theorists saw a supranational power group. This conspiracy theory has been tacitly adopted: last month all NPO cameras were focused on Davos when there was something going on there. The WEF has thus been made more liberal..)

Institutional organization of crisis communication

No expense was spared to secure support.

The communication architecture was layered. At a strategic level, coordination took place within the Ministerial Committee on Crisis Management (MCCb), with a central role for the Prime Minister and the NCTV (National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security). The MCCb became the MCC from July 2020 (Ministerial Committee on Covid-19, also called MCC-19). 'MCCb' is the terminology of the NCTV Crisis Structure. The implementation was carried out by VWS, the Government Information Service (RVD) and the RIVM behavioral team, supported by external communication and strategy agencies, the Corona Behavioral Unit (CGU), which provided weekly input (and occasionally at the request of the NCTV) to the NCTV (specifically: the ACC-19: Official Committee Covid-19 with Dick Schoof as chairman, the successor of the Interdepartmental Crisis Management Committee (ICCb). The center of the crisis organization is always the NCC (National Crisis Center) and the center of crisis communication is the NKC (National Crisis Communication Core Team), staffed 24/7, both housed at the NCTV. The NKC also included a delegation from the Corona Behavioral Unit of the rivm - which the rivm itself initially did not want.

The combination of central direction and fragmented financing enabled rapid scale-up of crisis communication and largely shifted democratic control to ex-post accountability: assessment after the fact, when the policy choices were already in fact irreversible.

The size of the investments

Based on national budgets, annual reports and the Accountability Survey by the Court of Audit, it can be reconstructed that in 2020 approximately €900 million was spent on media and communication-related activities in the context of COVID-19.

This concerns both direct public communication and indirect media-related support that is functionally related to government messages (such as compensation of public broadcasting revenues and targeted media support).

Table 1 – Media and communications-related expenditure (2020)

Converted, this amounts to approximately €60 per inhabitant in one year, spent on public influence and narrative maintenance.

How exceptional was this?

These amounts become more meaningful when compared to regular communications expenditures before COVID-19.

Table 2 — Indicative comparison of public communication before and during COVID-19

There is no precedent in recent Dutch history for such an upscaling of communications investments in peacetime.

Target group segmentation and strategic allocation

Communication efforts were not uniformly distributed. The population was functionally segmented based on behavioral research. This segmentation has been reconstructed from RIVM monitors, policy documents and published Woo documents.

Table 3 – Functional target group segmentation (reconstructed)

The highest per-capita investments went to the hesitant middle group — precisely the group that determined social support for vaccination in 2021. An average of €83 was invested per doubter.

The actual input side of crisis communication is only partially reconstructable and the output side, social support and standard compliance in 2021, became fully visible and useful from a policy perspective.

The 'disappeared' €5.1 billion

What cannot be left undiscussed in this context is the fact that part of the administratively unjustified expenditure was also spent on communication. This lack of transparency is itself part of the problem. Below are some figures.

In the 2020 Accountability Survey, the Court of Audit concluded that the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport could not sufficiently demonstrate the legality or soundness of the substantiation for approximately €5.1 billion in expenditure and obligations. It is therefore impossible to reconstruct ex-post (after the fact) with certainty how these resources are distributed across categories such as direct care, hiring, advice, communication and use of intermediary organizations.

Based on departmental accountability and the Court of Audit analysis, an empirical lower limit can be estimated of approximately € 0.5 billion (approx. 10% of the 5.1 billion), booked under the item 'advice, communication and support'. When this lower limit is added to the reported communication expenditure, the minimum size of public communication and behavioral management amounts to approximately € 1.4 billion. This amount is approx ten times higher than regular communications expenditure in 2019 and the amounts in Table 3 then become one and a half times as high.

Deze verhoogde ondergrens veronderstelt dat eventuele aanvullende uitgaven aan derden -zoals bekende personen, influencers, maatschappelijke organisaties of andere intermediaire actoren- reeds in deze posten zijn inbegrepen. Daarbij mogelijk ook de professioneel geproduceerde audiovisuele uitingen van medisch personeel, waaronder gecoördineerde groepsvideo’s met choreografie, vaak professionele registratie en montage, waarvoor geen expliciete budgettaire verantwoording is terug te vinden. Dit bevreemdt, omdat het verdedigbaar zou zijn dat VWS in die barre tijden het communicatiebudget van zorginstellingen aanvulde, ook voor de interne motivatie - met een duidelijke briefing over de video's die wereldwijd verschenen. De daaruit sprekende impliciete boodschap ("wij doen dit samen en wij doen dit voor jullie”) was immers geheel in lijn met de messaging from the government. It was not just a moral appeal and a demonstration of loyalty; it was also normalization of policy.

Conclusion

When it is stated that “the population asked for vaccines”, this must be understood against the background of the previous year. The support that then became visible:

• was prepared through intensive communication in 2020,
• was continuously measured and confirmed,
• and subsequently served as legitimation for policy.

Democratic support was therefore not the input for action, but the output of an unprecedentedly heavy strategic information campaign for the Netherlands.

What was presented as “listening to the population” functioned in practice as producing and managing support within an institutionally protected interpretation framework. The understanding democratic support lost its normative significance and became a policy variable.

Accountability

The purpose of this article is explicit not appointing those responsible or abolishing institutions, on the contrary. Punishing leaders, despite the symbolic value and the satisfaction it would provide for some, will not lead to any improvement in systemic dynamics. Replacement, equivalent leaders will immediately be put forward, as can be seen from those who have already been awarded or promoted after a role during the corona period. That is also system dynamics.
However, the plea is not anti-institutional either, on the contrary: it pleads for institutional recovery, not demolition. Institutes - and especially the media, which can hold institutes accountable for (in)transparency - should regain their independence, transparency and thus reliability precisely in order to function in a valuable way again.

Methodological note

The amounts and proportions in this article have been reconstructed based on public government sources and published administrative documents. The core consists of:

1. From departmental annual reports and budgets of VWS, AZ and OCW for 2018–2021 (Parliamentary documents 27500-VIII, 35470-III(A), 35830-XVI).
2. The VWS Accountability Survey 2020 of the Court of Audit (2021), which mentions €5.1 billion in unlawful or insufficiently substantiated expenditure, of which approximately €0.5 billion falls under the item “advice, communication and support”.
3. From Woo publications VWS 010–017 (2022–2023) that specify the use of influencers and communications consultancies.
4. Public budget information from the RVD budget and Ster annual accounts 2020, which record public campaigns and media pressure in financial years.
5. RIVM Corona Behavior Monitor
6. Additional sector data (NOW transparency UWV, Media expenditure CBS) for context.
7. Additional analyzes by independent researchers, including Cees van den Bosch and Leon Kuunders (X: @Leon1969)

All amounts have been rounded down, making the presented total media-related expenditure (≈ €900 million or ≈ €1.4 billion) conservative rather than speculative. The per-capita expenditure has been calculated based on the population estimate of 15.3 million residents aged 12 years and older (CBS, StatLine 2020) and a group distribution from the RIVM Behavioral Team (Corona Monitor 2020–2021).

Footnotes

• 1
  Article: The dilemma of anti-institutional science
• 2
  Article: The Mediacracy 1
• 3
  Influencing the behavior of citizens organized on a large scale. Substack Trees and Forest
• 4
  The orchestration of a coup by the NCTV Substack Trees and Forest
• 5
  "Als de angst zo groot is moeten we toch wel proberen om met één mond te praten [...] Ja dat vind ik zeker!" Pieter Klok on Radio 1
• 6
  Article: Where is the science?
• 7
  Youtube compilation Build back better (1m 55s)
• 8
  At the time, the WEF was still framed by the media as a social talking shop, in which only conspiracy theorists saw a supranational power group. This conspiracy theory has been tacitly adopted: last month all NPO cameras were focused on Davos when there was something going on there. The WEF has thus been made more liberal.