Setting the Aware Agenda of the Covid-19 Health Emergency: The Italian Public Authorities' Social Media Coverage

Among its main goals, crisis management aims at promoting people awareness in respect of the crisis which they are going to face or in which they are already involved. In order to do that, it uses a wide range of communication tools, among which, over the last decade, social media have proved to be of paramount importance. Based on these premises, the chapter analyses a very meaningful case of crisis communication, which consists of the social media coverage of the early stages of the COVID-19 emergency coming from Italian national and local institutions. The media content analysis carried out on Facebook and Twitter confirms a communication strategy aimed at creating people awareness in respect of the health emergency, suggesting citizens which conducts they need to stop or adopt. However, the analysis also shows that the goal of crisis awareness represents the first step of a wider agenda coming from the Institutions' social posting, which aims at transferring their awareness to citizenship and, as a consequence, inspiring citizens' own responsibility