COVID-19 Communication Management on Facebook Pages of Local Governments

IF 3.2 3区管理学 Q1 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Administration & Society Pub Date : 2023-04-18 DOI:10.1177/00953997231165258

Diego Ravenda, Maika M. Valencia-Silva, Josep M. Argilés‐Bosch, Josep García-Blandón

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

We examine how Italian municipalities manage COVID-19 communication on their official Facebook pages. For this purpose, we apply an automatic topic modeling procedure on a sample of 76,139 posts published on the official Facebook pages of 103 Italian provincial capital municipalities from 1 March 2020 to 26 March 2021 of the COVID-19 pandemic period. We identify two topics related to COVID-19 consisting of restrictive measures and support measures. Using regression models with municipality and year-week fixed effects, we find that the prevalence of the topic on COVID-19 restrictive measures negatively affects the tone of the communication, computed through a sentiment analysis procedure, and it is negatively associated with the number of COVID-19 positive cases in the municipal area. In contrast, the prevalence of the topic on COVID-19 support measures positively affects the tone of the communication and it is positively associated with the number of positive cases. These associations are moderated by ideology, age, and political incentives of incumbent mayors. These results may reveal a strategic communication of municipalities to induce positive perceptions about the performance of municipal incumbents in responding to the pandemic and, therefore, enhance political consensus among voters. Finally, these findings may have practical implications for public regulators, public managers, and other followers of local governments on social media.

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地方政府Facebook页面的新冠肺炎传播管理

我们研究了意大利市政当局如何在其官方Facebook页面上管理COVID-19传播。为此，我们对2020年3月1日至2021年3月26日COVID-19大流行期间意大利103个省会城市的官方Facebook页面上发布的76139个帖子的样本应用了自动主题建模程序。我们确定了与COVID-19相关的两个主题，包括限制措施和支持措施。使用具有城市和年-周固定效应的回归模型，我们发现，通过情感分析程序计算，关于COVID-19限制措施的话题的流行程度对沟通的语气产生了负面影响，并且与市政地区的COVID-19阳性病例数呈负相关。相反，关于COVID-19支持措施的话题的流行度对沟通的语气产生了积极影响，并与阳性病例的数量呈正相关。这些联系受到现任市长的意识形态、年龄和政治动机的制约。这些结果可能表明，市政当局进行了战略性沟通，以促使人们对市政现任官员在应对大流行病方面的表现产生积极看法，从而增进选民之间的政治共识。最后，这些发现可能对公共监管机构、公共管理者和其他地方政府在社交媒体上的追随者具有实际意义。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Administration & Society PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION-

CiteScore

4.50

自引率

4.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： Administration & Society seeks to further the understanding of public and human service organizations, their administrative processes, and their effect on society. The journal publishes empirically oriented research reports and theoretically specific articles that synthesize or contribute to the advancement of understanding and explanation in these fields. Of particular interest are (1) studies that analyze the effects of the introduction of administrative strategies, programs, change interventions, and training; and (2) studies of intergroup, interorganizational, and organization-environment relationships and policy processes.