IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0272558.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

COVID-19 and communication: A sentiment analysis of US state governors’ official press releases

Author

Listed:
  • Mauricio Tano
  • Juha Baek
  • Adriana Ordonez
  • Rita Bosetti
  • Terri Menser
  • George Naufal
  • Bita Kash

Abstract

Objectives: This study examines the contents of official communication from United States governors’ offices related to the COVID-19 pandemic to assess patterns in communication and to determine if they correlate with trends for COVID cases and deaths. Methods: We collected text data for all COVID-19 related press releases between March 1 and December 31, 2020 from the US governors’ office websites in all 50 states. An automated parsing and sentiment analyzer assessed descriptive statistics and trends in tone, including positivity and negativity. Results: We included a total of 7,720 press releases in this study. We found that both positive and negative sentiments were homogenous across states at the beginning of the pandemic but became heterogeneous as the pandemic evolved. The same trend applied to the frequency and tone of press releases. Sentiments across states were overall positive with a small level of negativity. We observed a reactive official communication to the evolution of the number of COVID-19 cases rather than responsive or preventive. Conclusions: The findings of both positivity and negativity in press communications suggest that the effect of discounted importance was present in official communications. Our findings support a state-dependent optimal communication frequency and tone, agreeing with the curvilinear communication model of organizational theory and implying that feedback cycles between government officials and public response should be shortened to rapidly maximize communication efficacy during the pandemic. Future research should identify and evaluate the drivers of the large differences in communication tone across states and validate the reactive characteristics of COVID-19 official communications.

Suggested Citation

  • Mauricio Tano & Juha Baek & Adriana Ordonez & Rita Bosetti & Terri Menser & George Naufal & Bita Kash, 2022. "COVID-19 and communication: A sentiment analysis of US state governors’ official press releases," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(8), pages 1-15, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0272558
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0272558
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0272558
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0272558&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0272558?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hun‐Tong Tan & Elaine Ying Wang & Bo Zhou, 2014. "When the Use of Positive Language Backfires: The Joint Effect of Tone, Readability, and Investor Sophistication on Earnings Judgments," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(1), pages 273-302, March.
    2. Manuel Becerra & Anil K. Gupta, 2003. "Perceived Trustworthiness Within the Organization: The Moderating Impact of Communication Frequency on Trustor and Trustee Effects," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 14(1), pages 32-44, February.
    3. Chris Sherlock & Alexandre H. Thiery & Anthony Lee, 2017. "Pseudo-marginal Metropolis–Hastings sampling using averages of unbiased estimators," Biometrika, Biometrika Trust, vol. 104(3), pages 727-734.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Le Wang & Xiaoyan Chen & Xing Li & Gaoliang Tian, 2021. "MD&A readability, auditor characteristics, and audit fees," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(4), pages 5025-5050, December.
    2. Chen, Chen & Hanlon, Dean & Khedmati, Mehdi & Wake, James, 2023. "Annual report readability and equity mispricing," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3).
    3. Li, Chia-Ying & Zhang, Jin-Ting, 2023. "Chatbots or me? Consumers’ switching between human agents and conversational agents," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    4. E. N. Bridwell-Mitchell & Theresa K. Lant, 2014. "Be Careful What You Wish For: The Effects of Issue Interpretation on Social Choices in Professional Networks," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(2), pages 401-419, April.
    5. Martin, Rachel, 2019. "Examination and implications of experimental research on investor perceptions," Journal of Accounting Literature, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 145-169.
    6. Baginski, Stephen P. & Demers, Elizabeth & Kausar, Asad & Yu, Yingri Julia, 2018. "Linguistic tone and the small trader," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 68, pages 21-37.
    7. Claudine Mangen & Alexia Paduano & Bianca Paduano & Jessica Hadzurik & Juliano Leggio & Kayla Russo, 2020. "Smoke and Mirrors? Disclosures in the Marijuana Industry in Canada," Accounting Perspectives, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(3), pages 149-179, September.
    8. Nilsson, Magnus & Mattes, Jannika, 2015. "The spatiality of trust: Factors influencing the creation of trust and the role of face-to-face contacts," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 230-244.
    9. Miao Jiang & Bo Zhu & Luxi Li, 2024. "Manager‐specific manipulation of tone and stock price synchronicity," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 64(4), pages 3803-3821, December.
    10. Ferrin, Donald L. & Bligh, Michelle C. & Kohles, Jeffrey C., 2008. "It takes two to tango: An interdependence analysis of the spiraling of perceived trustworthiness and cooperation in interpersonal and intergroup relationships," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 161-178, November.
    11. Oliver Schilke & Karen S. Cook, 2015. "Sources of alliance partner trustworthiness: Integrating calculative and relational perspectives," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(2), pages 276-297, February.
    12. Jaeschke, Reemda & Lopatta, Kerstin & Yi, Cheong, 2018. "Managers’ use of language in corrupt firms’ financial disclosures: Evidence from FCPA violators," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 170-192.
    13. Michael Pirson & Deepak Malhotra, 2011. "Foundations of Organizational Trust: What Matters to Different Stakeholders?," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(4), pages 1087-1104, August.
    14. Jiang, Xu & Bao, Yongchuan & Xie, Yan & Gao, Shanxing, 2016. "Partner trustworthiness, knowledge flow in strategic alliances, and firm competitiveness: A contingency perspective," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 804-814.
    15. Lise A. van Oortmerssen & Cees M.J. van Woerkum & Noelle Aarts, 2014. "The Visibility of Trust: Exploring the connection between trust and interaction in a Dutch collaborative governance boardroom," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(5), pages 666-685, June.
    16. Grant, Stephanie M. & Hodge, Frank D. & Sinha, Roshan K., 2018. "How disclosure medium affects investor reactions to CEO bragging, modesty, and humblebragging," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 68, pages 118-134.
    17. Eddy Cardinaels & Stephan Hollander & Brian J. White, 2019. "Automatic summarization of earnings releases: attributes and effects on investors’ judgments," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 860-890, September.
    18. Vincent Lefebvre & Gilles Certhoux & Miruna Radu-Lefebvre, 2022. "Sustaining trust to cross the Valley of Death: A retrospective study of business angels’ investment and reinvestment decisions," Post-Print hal-03545529, HAL.
    19. Li, Ruiqian & Wu, Haiyun & Zhong, Ma & Lan, Hao, 2024. "Strategic tone management in ESG reports and ESG risk," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 96(PA).
    20. Xiao Carol Cui, 2016. "Calisthenics with Words: The Effect of Readability and Investor Sophistication on Investors’ Performance Judgment," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 4(1), pages 1-14, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0272558. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.