The establishment of the public agenda is a phenomenon of risk communication that consists of the dissemination of issues such as the distancing and confinement of people, instruments of containment and mitigation of the pandemic 34. In this sense, the conferences and statements of public health officials build a state agenda that is contrasted with the investigative agenda of the experts. In the case of the literature published during the pandemic, a scientific and investigative agenda is established that may coincide or contravene the provisions of the State. Thus, in terms of communicating the risks of Covid-19, the literature suggests that stigmas are established for doctors, nurses, social workers and police who work in health centers and hospitals. Meanwhile, citizens process this information in the media and electronic networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, WhatsApp, Instagram or TikTok. Although the state or scientific agenda is widely disseminated, the reception of its issues is processed according to the opinions of the people, who assume that the government is responsible for the management of the pandemic. In this way, the number of infections, diseases and deaths is attributed to the State rather than to the public. Even self-care and health promotion are attributed to health institutions.

In contrast, from the theory of human capital, health promotion may be attributable to the State, but self-care is an indicator of personal development, as well as a distinctive feature of academic, professional, and work training. If students, professionals and workers develop academic or work skills, they are obliged to prevent accidents and illnesses based on consumer decisions and in line with the internal strategies or programs of companies and institutions 5. In that order of ideas, the theory of intellectual capital emphasizes the capacities, abilities and knowledge that not only allude to the risks of contagion, illness, or death, but that from processing allusive data can be anticipated. In addition, beyond risk prevention, there is health-oriented behavior that can be compatible with government strategies to reduce spending. Both categories, human capital as the development of academic and work capacities, as well as intellectual capital as the development of information skills and knowledge, contravene the state risk communication. This is so because the State legitimizes its intervention by considering citizens as recipients of its health policies. In contrast, the scientific community tries to reveal an agenda of differences between the actors, but oriented towards a common origin and purpose, such as health.

It is scientific studies that warn of the defenselessness of citizens as government strategies of confinement and social distancing intensify, as well as demonstrations of risk areas, exposure to contagion and the probability of illness and death 2. Far from considering data on risks, infections, diseases and deaths, citizens build their agenda from the type of state or scientific communication. The more the data on Covid-19 intensifies, the more hopelessness is generated in the audiences. In fact, speeches about the end of humanity and the need to compensate for that expectation with hedonistic actions are exacerbated. Consequently, the study of social capital acquires a health dimension linked to hopelessness rather than risk prevention. The learned hopelessness theory suggests that the bombardment of information fosters inaction as the risk event approaches the recipient's context. Audiences consider the legal event and the probability of acting unrelated to the phenomenon. In contrast, the proximity of the risk encourages immediate action whenever the event is unavoidable. If there is a possibility that the event is not significantly risky, it will lead to weak or absent action.

The principles that guide rational choice lie in tastes and preferences, crystallizing the objectives of the actors 30. Therefore, before making any binding preferences strategy decisions, gather information that will determine the choice. If individuals prefer to have an indeterminate number of tastes, objectives and goals, then their preference will no longer depend on their capacity for choice and action 7. Therefore, they act in a non – rational way. Rational choice theory also warns that a decision is the result of an estimate of the costs and benefits of trying regardless of its degree of significance 28. This is a utilitarian dimension in which controlling a situation to establish a favorable balance of benefits versus costs will determine the choice. More specifically, benefits and costs translate into a ratio of risk, effort, and reward 3. This means that a choice must be rational when risks and efforts are minimal if the rewards are greater.             

On the other hand, when the recognition of an effort and risk does not live up to expectations, then the choice has not been completely rational and rather approaches an irrational dimension if the risks and efforts are increasing and intense with respect to the absence of rewards 21. This is because the individual attempting it is committed to the risks that will be triggered by profit expectations 27. The integration of each of the variables represents a series of paths in which the correlations explain each choice 11. The rational choice explained in general terms the process by which preferences are the determining factor for other factors that generate information or perceive a climate of certainty when deciding and acting accordingly 13. To the extent that such information is available, accessible and actionable, then the rational choice will emerge as an option, but ambiguity proliferates, then a non – rational decision will be generated with irrational consequences.                 

However, when the information is not available or is very abstract, the rational choice is replaced by a more strict option to the culture, values and norms of the people with respect to a contingency for which some precedents are not known, but the people they always react in the same way 29.

Studies on the establishment of the agenda and social, human and intellectual capital emphasize the relationship between the rulers and the ruled with respect to risk events 33. In this way, it is known that the communication of the mitigation or containment of the pandemic favors academic, professional and labor training, but not in the effective way that a public and common agency could mean between the parties involved, the political and social actors, as well as the public and private sectors.

Studies of risk communication and academic, professional and labor training have demonstrated the emergence of social hopelessness in the face of the intensive dissemination of infections, diseases and deaths, but very little is known about the impact that scientific literature has on public policies and the self-care of people 25. These investigations have shown a consonance between the diffusion of the distancing and confinement of people with respect to contagions, diseases and deaths, but not with regard to the inclusion of risk communication in the decisions of formation of social, human and intellectual capital. In other words, defenselessness is a response to risks, but it does not imply a common agenda between the parties involved.

The studies of the establishment of the agenda and the social, human and intellectual capital have advanced in three phases: The agenda as distinctive themes of the political and social actors, the framing of the media and the impact of information on audience consumption. . This is the case of the conferences on Covid-19 produced by the Mexican State. The agenda focused on the asymmetries between detection tests and confirmed cases of infection by coronavirus SARS CoV-2 and / or patients by Covid-19. Event of national coverage with effects on audiences instructed in distancing and social confinement.

If the first studies allude to the frequency of data issued by health institutions on compliance with the norms of confinement and social distancing, the studies on framing advanced towards the dissemination of information on two types of audiences: audiences oriented by plausibility. and driven by informative verifiability 10. It is about the plausibility strategy that consists of the prevalence of images and that are directed towards audiences that look for sources in accordance with their normative principles. Faced with informative credibility, a media verifiability is built that lies in comparing data from different sources to investigate differences and establish a specialized and updated agenda of cases of infections, diseases and deaths from Covid-19.

However, the agenda and the framing are instances that paved the way for investigating the impact of the media and networks on human behavior 19. If the establishment of issues such as distancing and confinement were oriented towards audiences that preferred these strategies because they consider that the State should guarantee the health of citizens, then the effect of communication styles would warn of risk amplification scenarios. This is the case of political actors who dismissed the pandemic and fostered in the hearings a sense of normalcy without restrictions, but with incalculable effects of contagion, diseases and deaths. In opposition to this communication of plausibility and catastrophic effects on audiences, communication for the verifiability of data generates risk prevention, but based on the hopelessness of the audiences. This is so because the comparison of data from different sources supposes a comprehensive panorama that guides decisions and actions towards prevention whenever the audiences consider that they are in control of a risk situation.

If the rational choice is being developed based on preferences based on available information to determine tastes and objectives, the forward-looking attitude suggests that the absence of information generates uncertainty that determines the aversion to risk or the renunciation of certain gains and appetite for risk when losses are imminent 2. Thus, utility, profit or happiness crystallize in profit or loss, bypassing the rational choice process and legitimizing an irrational choice 20. Therefore, a prospective is more than a decision, it lies in the attitude and expectation of risk or certainty of gains and losses in the immediate future. In that sense, a retrospective is an attitude that has the same relationships but compared to the previous one 8. The prospective attitude is a hinge between rational choice and reasoned action 1. The surrounding information in the media would lead to rational choices if the audiences could access all the content. In contrast, the reasoned action warns that motivation, attitudes and intentions are enough to prevent a behavior promoted in the media. Each of these theoretical and conceptual frameworks bases its scope and limits on the availability of information, if the individual is capable of assuming an attitude, making a decision or taking an action that corresponds to the available information and the representation that it has.     

From the theoretical and empirical frameworks on the agenda, the setting, the plausibility and the verifiability of the pandemic, confinement and distancing, it is possible to model the formation of social, human and intellectual capital in a risk situation such as contagions, diseases and deaths that the literature has reported from December 2019 to August 2021.

In this way, the study of the agenda, framing, plausibility and verifiability in the literature published during the pandemic supposes a formation of the social, human and intellectual capital from images and data 8. This is so because the media and networks disseminate the topics of the political and scientific agenda in an intensive way that promote hopelessness in the citizenry, causing risky behaviors such as exposure to Covid-19 in closed places. Or, they promote risk prevention compatible with confinement and distancing, but close to hopelessness rather than deliberation and planning of detection tests, vaccination, use of masks, alcohol gel or oximeter.

Unlike rational choice theory that focuses on the usefulness of available information and forward-looking attitude theory that focuses on the certainty of information, reasoned action theory assumes that information, whatever In other words, it is a general environment that will influence behavior to the extent that the information is transformed into rules 23. This is because the theory of reasoned action considers that all information is a cognitive process 16. Therefore, an overview of the environment, its demands and favorable opportunities Categories of accessible and abundant information availability that will influence wasteful behavior, such as believing that jobs, salaries and financial credits increase significantly 26. On the contrary, if the context is rather recessive and one of economic crisis, then austere, cooperative and innovative lifestyles will be adopted.        

However, the theory of reasoned action, like the theory of rational choice and the theory of prospective attitude, pose a predictive scenario of a specific behavior without considering the current situation and without specifying who makes the decision 4. The rational choice assumes that the context can be reducible to information disenable in the media without assuming the segmentation of audiences. The reasoned action warns that the available information is enough reason for decision making. The forward-looking attitude assumes that risks coexist with earnings expectations, reaching an informative balance for exposure to threats.