“Only four months into the start of the new decade, Australia has faced not one but two national crises: a bushfire disaster that has caused unprecedented damage to the natural environment and livelihoods, and now the Covid-19 pandemic, a global crisis which has hit Australia and already resulted in unprecedented restrictions and threatens to inflict long-term economic pain.

In dealing with these crises, the government has focused primarily on traditional categories of disaster and emergency management (DEM) such as emergency response, public-health measures, border security, and economic stimulus. Governments also traditionally put together strategic communications campaigns to project a sense of control and authority, and to mitigate the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories that commonly pop up during times of crisis.

However, governments are missing a key element of crisis response: they have not fully accounted for the acceleration of violent extremist narratives as part of their disaster management …”