During the pandemic emergency, several communicative artifacts have been produced. These language practices adhered to the crisis risk communication strategies. Within the COVID-19 pandemic to date, the discourse analysis is limited to media or leaders language with little analysis of institutional crisis communication. This contribution aims at filling this gap by presenting a documentary analysis of the Italian case. Data includes 648 official documents produced between the declaration of the state of emergency (January 31, 2020) and its cessation (March 31, 2022). Results shed light on the technocratic approach the Italian crisis discourse laid on, in which the nature of risk was objective and knowable.

648 documents. Non-probabilistic purposive sample. The documents were selected from those freely accessible on the official websites of the institutions considered, filtering on the keyword 'COVID-19'. Among the results obtained, documents concerning restrictive decisions on fundamental rights and civil liberties (e.g. freedom of movement), enforced everyday freedoms (e.g. wearing masks, case tracking, quarantines, physical distancing, Green Pass), as well as closures (e.g. school closures, business closures and bans on public events) were selected.

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