Communication during pandemic: who should tweet about COVID and how?

Abstract

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated the health and wealth of individuals and economies. Firms have lost businesses while people have lost their jobs and even lives because of the pandemic. Hence, it is critical to understand whether and how firms should communicate with their consumers. The author analyzes social media tweets from 35 major car companies for 21 months during the pandemic, and detects different COVID-tweeting effects between luxury and non-luxury brands. While firms often spend much effort providing COVID-19 related information during pandemic, this paper finds that tweeting about COVID-19 (relative to other content) generally hurts consumer engagement (i.e. decreases retweets). Interestingly, this negative effect is moderated if tweets are posted by luxury firms (vs. non-luxury firms). Last, if firms tweet about COVID-19, they should focus more on stakeholders, such as consumers and employees in their tweets. The author generates implications for social media strategies during tremendous uncertainty and crisis periods.