Entertainment industry sector under the spotlight: How PR professionals and event organizers communicate during pandemic crisis

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has wounded sociality and limited the possibility to stay together: the essence of many forms of art. All the sectors whose activities are based on cultural values, or artistic, creative expressions, market or non-market oriented. It includes architecture, archives, libraries and museums, artistic crafts, audio-visual tangible and intangible cultural heritage, design, festivals, music, literature, performing arts, publishing, radio and visual arts. This paper aims to shed a light not only on the scarce literature on the field, but also on the particularities of how professionals communicate during pandemic crisis in the entertainment industry, especially at the moment when the whole world is being confronted by multiple crisis that have converged. In doing so, we explore how public relations practitioners and event organizers in Romania acknowledge the importance of being aware of the crisis, how they refer to crisis, the tools they use and the way they approach stakeholders. With the help of semi-structured interviews with public relations practitioners and event organizers in Romania, we aim to structure a frame of looking at the crisis communication in the entertainment industry during this pandemic crisis, with a particular focus on celebrities.