Dealing with misinformation in times of crises: an analysis of pharmaceutical companies’ corporate social media communication

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the role of pharmaceutical companies in countering health misinformation through social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. While pharmaceutical companies emerged as pivotal yet deeply contested actors in the public health information ecosystem, their role in infodemic management remains empirically understudied compared with governmental agencies and platform-level interventions. Design/methodology/approach This study analyzes 6,466 tweets from six major pharmaceutical companies over 2020–2021, combining BERT-based topic modeling, lexicon-based misinformation strategy detection and emotion analysis to examine communicative orientations, boosting and refutation strategies and affective tone and their effects on user engagement measured through likes and retweets. Findings Results indicate that science-based communication generates significantly higher user engagement than other types of content; that boosting strategies predominate and are associated with greater audience amplification than refutation; and that neutral factual content outperforms positively framed messaging. This suggests that epistemic credibility, rather than emotional resonance, shapes audience responses during health crises. Originality/value This research provides empirical examination of how pharmaceutical companies operationalize misinformation counterstrategies in naturalistic social media environments, with implications for corporate crisis communication and the broader governance of public health information.