LAUSR

Research on corporate communications – the strategic use of public language to influence stakeholders – has flourished in recent years, but the COVID19 pandemic highlights some shortcomings in corporate communication research. Three salient features differentiate pandemic communications from the typical communication setting studied by management scholars. First, the pandemic generated an extreme level of uncertainty, shared by both communicators and listeners. Second, the pandemic created information disorder, disrupting the normal manner of information processing and decision making. Third, the pandemic is characterized by a flood of information that overwhelms listeners. Our study explores these challenges and offers important insights that suggest the reevaluation of some existing assumptions and recommendations is in order.