Abstract

The global COVID-19 pandemic is transforming the communication practices not only of business structures but also of institutions. It has triggered a cascade of crisis situations in the state administration, which are specific to each structure, but at the same time involve coordinating communication actions with local authorities and related ministries. The public communications experts in the structures of the state administration in their routine activity carry out contacts with the media, building relations with non-governmental organisations and representatives of the civil sector, and work in coordination with other institutions. This is the first Bulgarian study that highlights the deficits in social media crisis strategies of local institutions. The research methodology includes: 1) monitoring of the official Facebook pages of Bulgarian ministries, made by a complied codebook with following criteria: identification of a crisis situation, type of published content, communication techniques for reaction, feedback and frequency of publication; 2) a survey among 182 communication specialists working in Bulgarian ministries and municipal structures.

BIO

Associate Professor Maria Nikolova is currently the Head of the Department of Media and Public Communications (UNESCO Chair on Media and Information Literacy and Cultural Policies for Sustainable Development) at the University of National and World Economy (UNWE). She teaches courses in Crisis Public Relations (PR), Business Communications and PR, and Communication in Social Media for undergraduate students in the Media and Journalism and Media Economics programs. Additionally, she teaches the PR Writing in Public Relations course in the master's program at the same department. She has participated in several university and international research projects focusing on media and digital literacy, hate speech and vulnerable social groups, and crisis communication in social media, among other topics. Since February 2023, she has also been a member of the international communication team for the ENGAGE.EU project—an alliance of leading European universities. Between 2016 and 2020, she served two terms as a member of the Committee for Professional Ethics at the Bulgarian Public Relations Association. She is the author of two monographs: Crisis Management in Social Media and The Cultural Image of the Balkans.