Unveiling the paradox of public administrations’ risk and crisis communication during Covid-19

This article investigates public administrations’ (PAs’) social media (SM) risk communication and their related de-paradoxification strategies. PAs were classified according to their SM engagement and communication style. A content analysis was performed on 5,106 Covid-19-related Facebook posts. PAs struggled to decide which risks to communicate. During the crisis, they coped with a paradoxical situation by adopting different strategies, leading to different risk communication and public engagement styles.