Chance to Shine or Heading for Disaster? – Exploring German Social Enterprises’ Stakeholder Communication Facing COVID-19-Induced Lockdowns

During COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns were imposed to contain infections. For social enterprises (SEs), that apply entrepreneurial means to fulfil their social missions, research suggests lockdown-related chances and risks. However, no insights on SE stakeholder communication facing COVID-19-induced lockdowns exist. Our work investigates SEs' communicational framings for two successive lockdowns based on 121 German SEs. Analysing Facebook data with a mixed methods approach, we show that, after both lockdowns, chance-oriented framings dominated. However, they decreased after the second lockdown. Despite a limited generalisability and a potential positivity bias in our data, we offer notable insights regarding SE stakeholder crisis communication.