One Earth, One Humanity Versus the Virus: Examining the Global COVID-19 Social Partnership Communication Networks on Social Media

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed severe challenges that require collaborative efforts from multi-sector organizations. Guided by an institutional theory framework that considers how both organizational fields and national level contexts affect organizations' social partnership communication, the current study examines the COVID-19-related social partnership communication network on social media. The cross-national study using semantic network analysis and exponential random graph models (ERGMs) first maps the meaning of COVID-19 social partnership network, and then investigates the role of organizational fields and a country's political system, economic system, educational system, and cultural system on the formation of interorganizational communication ties surrounding the relief efforts of COVID-19. Results reveal the importance of the political system-such as the presence of populist government, economic disparity, and uncertainty avoidance cultural orientation in shaping the social media-based social partnership communication network. In addition, NGOs from multiple issue areas are actively engaged in the network, whereas corporations from manufacturing and financial industries are active players.

Mask-Wearing as a Partisan Issue: Social Identity and Communication of Party Norms on Social Media Among Political Elites

This study draws on the social identity approach (SIA), to examine how political elites (i.e., members of the 116th United States Congress) communicated norms about mask-wearing on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using Twitter data collected in 2020, we found that Republican members of Congress were significantly less likely to promote mask-wearing than Democratic members. We also observed some variations in norm-conforming behaviors among the members of each party. For Republicans, increased loyalty to the Trump leadership was significantly associated with a lower level of mask promotion. For Democrats, we found some evidence that loyalty to the party predicted higher levels of mask promotion. On the other hand, interactions with out-group members decreased adherence to party norms for both Republican and Democratic members of Congress. These findings allow us to better understand the social-psychological effects of party membership among political elites as well as the importance of leader-follower relationships and intergroup interactions.