Novas estratégias comunicacionais diante da pandemia de Covid-19: reflexões sobre o papel público da comunicação organizacional / New communication strategies in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic: reflections on the public role of organizational communication

The Covid-19 pandemic impacted many social spheres and demanded immediate transformations in society. Organizations needed to reinvent themselves quickly in several aspects, such as their internal practices, as well as in the way of relating to their various publics. This evidenced the interdependence between business organizations and society, requiring them to act for collective interests. In view of this, it is observed that these organizations are assuming a public character, being important to think about how they get involved with society and what are the impacts for social, political, cultural and economic realities. For this, organizational communication has an important role because it is able to act in the public sphere with regard to the promotion of debates that can impact collective attitudes, considering that organizations occupy a strategic position to direct issues that influence social behavior. As a communicative phenomenon, they disseminate ideas, values, and information that influences society, mainly because of their centrality in the daily lives of individuals. So, facing the pandemic scenario, there are numerous corporate actions that aim to serve the public interest, such as the initiative “Todos pela Saúde” (All for Health), an alliance between several organizations. This initiative was chosen as the object of study for contributing to the objective of this paper: analyzes the public role of organizational communication by assuming that communication strategies can generate an impact on public interests in face of the Covid-19 pandemic. The movement aims to mitigate the effects caused by the virus by supporting public health actions promoted by SUS (“Sistema Único de Saúde”- Health Unic System), contributing with solutions and financial support to the public authorities. The “Todos pela Saúde” is coordinated by a group of specialists from the health area that guide the decisions to be made to face the virus with scientific basis. Therefore, as a methodological procedure was adopted three ways: a bibliographic research aiming to investigate about the role of the communications from private organizations in the pandemic context; a documentary research of the “All for Health” medias; and the media discourse analysis (Charaudeau, 2005; 2006) and the dialogic aspects (Bakhtin, 2002; 2003) from the material released by the Initiative. As part of the results, it is observed that the strategies used, at least from the point of view of organizational communication, were innovative in producing something new in their narratives, because the organizations adopted a unison speech in favor of fighting the virus without political or commercial interest. Another highlight is the language strategies used, which seek to value the public in the enunciative act. The consequence is an unusual gender in organizational communication, the educative one. Undoubtedly, it is not possible to ignore the marketing objectives from this Initiative. However, it is important to understand organizational communication as a phenomenon of collective construction and reconstruction that influences the individuals, as well as guide the formation of society. This study provides significant reflections about the public impact of organizational communication for the collective interest, especially regarding the current Covid-19 pandemic.