This study aims to explore the variation across corporate crisis communication strategies for companies traded in the Dubai and Abu Dhabi stock exchanges through their use of Twitter during the COVID-19 crisis. We analyze communication activity in light of UAE residents’ cultural dimensions and linguistic attributes. Specifically, we assess the impact of the tweets’ orientation in terms of social versus business COVID-related tweets based on Hofstede’s dimensions of culture (power distance, uncertainty avoidance, collectivism, and masculinity) from one side, and the tweets’ language in terms of Arabic versus English COVID-related tweets from the other side. We find evidence to suggest that the impact of COVID-19 related tweets is significantly higher for social tweets relative to business tweets across all the time periods. As for language, mean retweets are significantly higher for Arabic tweets relative to English tweets. Specifically, Arabic social tweets have a significantly higher retweet impact compared to English social, Arabic business, and English business COVID tweet subgroups, consistent with the high collectivism and high uncertainty avoidance of Arabic-speaking cultures. Based on our findings, companies in highly diverse cultural and linguistic settings are urged to be active in communicating with stakeholders in their own languages, taking into account the cultural environment in which stakeholders participate, and with a focus on an appropriate mix of business and non-business (social) messages during periods of significant exogenous shocks.

本研究旨在探讨在迪拜和阿布扎比证券交易所上市的公司在 COVID-19 危机期间使用 Twitter 的情况下企业危机沟通策略的变化。我们根据阿联酋居民的文化维度和语言属性来分析交流活动。具体来说，我们根据霍夫斯泰德的文化维度（权力距离、不确定性避免、集体主义和男子气概）从一方面评估推文取向对社交与商业方面与新冠病毒相关的推文的影响，以及推文的语言对方发布的与新冠病毒相关的阿拉伯语和英语推文。我们发现的证据表明，在所有时间段内，与 COVID-19 相关的推文对社交推文的影响明显高于商业推文。至于语言，阿拉伯语推文的平均转发量明显高于英语推文。具体来说，与英语社交、阿拉伯商业和英语商业新冠推文亚组相比，阿拉伯语社交推文的转发影响明显更高，这与阿拉伯语文化的高度集体主义和高度避免不确定性相一致。根据我们的研究结果，在高度多元化的文化和语言环境中的公司应积极用自己的语言与利益相关者进行沟通，同时考虑利益相关者参与的文化环境，并注重商业和非商业的适当组合。 - 重大外源冲击期间的商业（社会）信息。