Functional fragmentation in city hall and Twitter communication during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Atlanta, San Francisco, and Washington, DC

International Perspectives on COVID-19 Communication Ecologies: Public Health Agencies’ Online Communication in Italy, Sweden, and the United States

“…In addition to engagement via internal employees, the high level of engagement with other national government organizations in all three countries indicates that these entities play an important role within the health agencies’ communication ecosystem. Similar patterns of online engagement behaviors were identified by previous literature ( Liu & Xu, 2019 ; Sutton et al, 2015 ; Wukich & Mergel, 2015 ; Zeemering, 2020 ) in which government and emergency agencies proved to engage predominantly with other government organizations. This tendency of health agencies to partner mainly with internal departments or external trusted government partners in their communicative efforts may come at the expense of other organizations.…”

“…This can help avoid fragmented or contradictory communication about health risks, as was the case in Italy (Missoni et al, 2020) and other countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Zeemering (2020) noted that the collaboration with external actors as measured by, for example, Twitter's mentions, could broaden the reach of city government agencies making the information about COVID-19 accessible beyond the council's followers.…”

“…With respect to the measures of online engagement, previous studies have often used number of social media replies, mentions, and reuse of information (e.g., retweets; Liu & Xu, 2019 ; Wukich & Mergel, 2015 ). Zeemering (2020) comparatively interrogated coordinated communication about COVID-19 by local government agencies in three cities in the United States as measured by Twitter mentions. In the context of Twitter, previous analyses of engagement during disasters revealed that government organizations mainly rely on trusted institutional sources and amplify information provided by other government organizations ( Sutton et al, 2015 ; Wukich et al, 2019 ; Wukich & Mergel, 2015 ).…”

“…Within this multivoice and information-rich environment, it is critical for responding organizations to collaborate with trusted partners for message delivery, in order to reduce information inconsistencies and cognitive stress in affected populations who receive conflicting messages ( Hall & Wolf, 2019 ; Seeger, 2007 ). In this respect, without specific efforts to coordinate the communication, functional fragmentation of government agencies may pose the risk of multiplying the type of information provided to the public ( Zeemering, 2020 ). Second, studies have demonstrated that message redundancy (i.e., receiving the same message from different sources) increases the possibility that the information is absorbed and acted on in crisis contexts ( Stephens et al, 2013 ).…”

Government Social Media Engagement Strategies and Public Roles

“…Moreover, the role of social media managers is germane to the extent that they connect residents to relevant information, resources, and agencies within their jurisdictions. Zeemering (2020) analyzes Atlanta, Washington, DC, and San Francisco's Twitter messaging during the COVID-19 pandemic and reports that mayoral staff bridged gaps between what were siloed city agencies in need of coordination. To what extent do social media managers also see their role as connecting residents with city resources?…”