Conquering the Liminal Space : Strategic Social Media Influencer Communication in the Finnish Public Sector During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Public sector organisations have traditionally used mass media and their own communication channels to communicate urgent matters to citizens. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced these organisations to look for new communication approaches. In Finland, several public-sector organisations collaborated with social media influencers (SMIs) to maximise their efforts in communicating about the measures needed to constrain the spread of the virus. Using a multiple-case study design, this chapter scrutinises four public-sector organisations and their collaboration with SMIs during the pandemic in 2020. We found that public organisations turned to SMIs through influencer marketing and influencer public relations to approach citizens in a personalised and emotional way to create a sense of community. This finding suggests expanding the previous categorisations of public communication campaigns and examining not only the purposes of the campaigns (behaviour change—policy change) but also their main appeal to citizens (information-centric—emotion-centric). While the campaigns appeared as efforts towards controlling the risks of the prevailing pandemic, they also appeared to entail possible risks.