Government Crisis Messaging on Social Media, Citizen Online Engagement and Compliance with Policies

Abstract

Government messaging constitutes an important part of its response to a crisis such as COVID-19. However, few studies examine how government crisis messaging on social media shapes citizen online engagement and realized compliance with policies. This study fills the gap. We draw on Situation Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) to classify government messages on social media and develop theories about how these messages affect citizen online engagement and offline compliance. Leveraging the SCCT framework, we utilize machine learning techniques to classify all the tweets of fifty governors between January 21st and December 13th, 2020. Using the classified tweets in fixed-effect models, we show that governors’ tweets related to informational, instructional, and compassionate messaging are consistently associated with increased citizen online engagement with state government. In addition, the results suggest a link between online engagement and compliance with stay-at-home orders and advisories to avoid non-essential travel. Meanwhile, governors’ instructional, compassionate, and praising messages are directly associated with better compliance.