Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has tested the capacity of governments -and political and health systems- to handle exceptional situations, where communication plays a fundamental role. This demands the deployment of coordinated, coherent, assertive, and efficient communication processes. Objective: The purpose of this article is to characterize the press conferences of the Ministry of Health of Mexico during the second phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, for being the main communication space to deal with the crisis. Methodology: The 28 conferences corresponding to the second phase of the pandemic were analyzed through content analysis in the FileMaker program, version 18. Results: The analysis shows that in addition to technical information, information on government crisis management occupies a privileged place within the conference. Conclusion: This official communication space took into account the structural elements of vulnerability that intervene in the spread of the pandemic, which is closely related to the call to individual and collective responsibility made by the State.

Self-perceived emotional intelligence in healthcare personnel is not just an individual skill but a work tool, which is even more necessary in times of crisis. This article aimed to determine emotional intelligence as perceived by students studying nursing at the University of Colima, Mexico, a year after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. A cross-sectional survey of an academic year stratified population of 349 students was conducted, using the Trait Meta-Mood Scale-24 instrument. A global descriptive analysis was performed for each school year. Additionally, an ANOVA was performed, and a Multiple Correspondence Analysis was executed. It is essential to highlight the high percentages for emotional attention within the results. However, a large percentage of students required improvement in emotional attention, clarity, and repair. According to their school year, significant differences were observed among student groups within the three emotional intelligence subscales (p < 0.05). Second-year students had low levels in the three subscales of emotional intelligence, while fourth-year students had adequate levels. We established that the scores were different depending on the school year, with a significant decrease in second-year students. The implementation of educational programs could aid in the development of emotional skills in students from the health field, especially in times of crisis.

Developing sex and sexuality education programmes for adolescents has proved challenging in many parts of the world, especially in contexts where the importance of these programmes is not valued. In such settings, educating about sex and sexuality may also require dealing with detractors who are active in spreading misinformation. This article identifies contextual barriers encountered by those involved in developing the Échale Neurona programme in Mexico. Team members associated with the programme have been teaching about sex and sexuality in public secondary and high schools since 2016. Grounded theory approach using semi-structured interviews. Interviews took place with 10 participants including health promotion experts and programme officials. The main focus of the interviews was on the contextual limitations encountered when implementing sex and sexuality education workshops. Findings reveal at least three types of barriers hindering the comprehensive sex and sexuality education developed by the programme: institutional, cultural and socio-educational barriers. Contextual barriers associated with family and school environments posed a significant challenge to implementation. Such barriers may facilitate or hinder sex and sexuality education programmes affecting the way young people develop their sex lives and live their sexuality.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to strengthen health communication in times of crisis. This study aims to analyze the media agenda of press conferences on COVID-19 in Mexico during the first two phases of the pandemic, based on journalists’ questions. The study is based on framing theory. The method used was content analysis from a quantitative perspective. This method was explicitly applied to the final section of the conferences, which dealt with “questions from the press.” The results show that at the beginning of the pandemic, the press was more interested in the government’s management of the health crisis than in issues such as the prevention of the disease itself or the economic impact of the crisis on the country. Moreover, the main characteristic of the questions was that they were generally socially relevant. In conclusion, we found that in the media agenda of the Mexican conference, the frame of attribution of responsibility was prominent but in combination with the frames of conflict, human interest, morality, and economic consequences.

Background: The COVID-19 crisis has been a fertile ground for misinformation due to several factors such as the uncertainty typical of crises, the hasty handling of information, the virality provided by social networks and the scarce resources that average citizens have to discern between what is true and what is false in the health information they consume. Objective: In this context, this article aims to characterise the COVID-19 hoaxes registered on the Mexican fact-checking platforms Animal Político and Verificado during 2020 and 2021. Method and design: The method used in this study was predominantly quantitative and took the form of content analysis. This method was applied to hoaxes registered on these two fact-checking sites. Results: The primary type of hoax encountered was one of deception, followed by decontextualisation, exaggeration and joking. Disinformation circulates mainly in social media, in various formats that make the false seem more credible. We found that public figures and the media contribute to the spread of health hoaxes. However, they do not contain hate speech as has been the case in other contexts informed by xenophobic and racist agenda. Conclusion: The disinformation on COVID-19 registered on the Mexican fact-checking platforms Animal Político and Verificado during 2020 and 2021 is characterised by a marked concern to question the role of vaccination in confronting and controlling the pandemic. In this way, denialist, conspiracy and anti-vaccine ideas have come to permeate public debate.

A substantial body of research exists on the management of COVID-19 by governments and the news, especially in higher-income countries. Less is known about middle- and lower-income country contexts during the global pandemic. We address this important gap in the literature by comparing the frames, topics, and tone toward the government in Mexico’s La Jornada, a center left news outlet, and Reforma, a center right business news outlet, on the Morena government’s COVID-19 vaccination strategy. Analysis of frames in the news from April 2020 to October 2022 shows that the attribution of responsibility frame was most often used overall, followed by conflict, and economic consequences. Media party parallelism or political parallelism was evident in both the framing and the tone of the news. La Jornada was more supportive and less critical of the Morena government led by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador known as AMLO, while Reforma was more critical. Other results also show notable differences in the treatment of the issue in both newspapers, including the types of items (news vs opinion pieces) on the subject, criticism of the vaccination strategy and the government, and the optimistic or pessimistic perspectives in the headlines. In conclusion, we argue that ideological bias in the news on the government’s COVID-19 vaccine strategy can undermine the neutrality and objectivity of information. We discuss avenues for future research in conclusion.