Unveiling the paradox of public administrations’ risk and crisis communication during Covid-19

IMPACT

This article explains how social media (SM) was used by regional administrations in Italy to mitigate the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic and deliver central government orders. SM posting increases public engagement, as well creating public value. The results of this empirical study suggest that local and regional governments should make SM a major part of their communication strategies.

ABSTRACT

This article investigates public administrations’ (PAs’) social media (SM) risk communication and their related de-paradoxification strategies. PAs were classified according to their SM engagement and communication style. A content analysis was performed on 5,106 Covid-19-related Facebook posts. PAs struggled to decide which risks to communicate. During the crisis, they coped with a paradoxical situation by adopting different strategies, leading to different risk communication and public engagement styles.

KEYWORDS:

• Crisis management
• de-paradoxification
• Facebook
• public engagement
• public value
• risk management
• social media