2.1 Public Notices
Public notice is often used to refer to various forms of notices given to the public in rulemaking or lawmaking proceedings. “Public notices refer to messages and figures released to the public which are closely related with their life, work and other aspects, such as information concerning food, accommodation, transportation, traveling, entertaining and shopping, so on and so forth.” (Qian, 2017, p.188). The defining feature of public notices is their accessibility to the general public. Whenever a notice is made accessible to the general public, it can be referred to as public notice.
In this study, we use “public discourse” to refer to notices released to the public in the form of banners during the epidemic, which is a kind of crisis communication at the community level. When COVID-19 was formally announced by the Chinese government in January 2020, plentiful banners were designed and put up in the community to caution the public against activities that might get them infected, such as going out, gathering, not wearing masks, staying too closely, etc. The following example is one asking the public to stay at home: “There is no specific medicine for novel coronavirus, and home isolation is the most effective way.” (新冠没有特效药,居家隔离最有效xīn guàn méi yǒu tè xiào yào, jū jiā gé lí zuì yǒu xiào). At that time, banners were used to mobilize the general public to fight against the epidemic. An examination of the use of banners during the epidemic can reveal how public notices are used to mobilize the public in the crisis.