scholarly journals Grappling With the COVID-19 Health Crisis: Content Analysis of Communication Strategies and Their Effects on Public Engagement on Social Media (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cindy Sing Bik Ngai ◽  
Rita Gill Singh ◽  
Wenze Lu ◽  
Alex Chun Koon
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Disease Prevention ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Communication Strategies ◽  
Sina Weibo ◽  
The Public ◽  
Narrative Style ◽  
External Sources ◽  
New Evidence

BACKGROUND The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has posed an unprecedented challenge to governments worldwide. Effective government communication of COVID-19 information with the public is of crucial importance. OBJECTIVE We investigate how the most-read state-owned newspaper in China, People’s Daily, used an online social networking site, Sina Weibo, to communicate about COVID-19 and whether this could engage the public. The objective of this study is to develop an integrated framework to examine the content, message style, and interactive features of COVID-19–related posts and determine their effects on public engagement in the largest social media network in China. METHODS Content analysis was employed to scrutinize 608 COVID-19 posts, and coding was performed on three main dimensions: content, message style, and interactive features. The content dimension was coded into six subdimensions: action, new evidence, reassurance, disease prevention, health care services, and uncertainty, and the style dimension was coded into the subdimensions of narrative and nonnarrative. As for interactive features, they were coded into links to external sources, use of hashtags, use of questions to solicit feedback, and use of multimedia. Public engagement was measured in the form of the number of shares, comments, and likes on the People’s Daily’s Sina Weibo account from January 20, 2020, to March 11, 2020, to reveal the association between different levels of public engagement and communication strategies. A one-way analysis of variance followed by a post-hoc Tukey test and negative binomial regression analysis were employed to generate the results. RESULTS We found that although the content frames of action, new evidence, and reassurance delivered in a nonnarrative style were predominant in COVID-19 communication by the government, posts related to new evidence and a nonnarrative style were strong negative predictors of the number of shares. In terms of generating a high number of shares, it was found that disease prevention posts delivered in a narrative style were able to achieve this purpose. Additionally, an interaction effect was found between content and style. The use of a narrative style in disease prevention posts had a significant positive effect on generating comments and likes by the Chinese public, while links to external sources fostered sharing. CONCLUSIONS These results have implications for governments, health organizations, medical professionals, the media, and researchers on their epidemic communication to engage the public. Selecting suitable communication strategies may foster active liking and sharing of posts on social media, which in turn, might raise the public’s awareness of COVID-19 and motivate them to take preventive measures. The sharing of COVID-19 posts is particularly important because this action can reach out to a large audience, potentially helping to contain the spread of the virus.

scholarly journals Grappling With the COVID-19 Health Crisis: Content Analysis of Communication Strategies and Their Effects on Public Engagement on Social Media

10.2196/21360 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. e21360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cindy Sing Bik Ngai ◽  
Rita Gill Singh ◽  
Wenze Lu ◽  
Alex Chun Koon
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Disease Prevention ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Communication Strategies ◽  
Sina Weibo ◽  
The Public ◽  
Narrative Style ◽  
External Sources ◽  
New Evidence

Background The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has posed an unprecedented challenge to governments worldwide. Effective government communication of COVID-19 information with the public is of crucial importance. Objective We investigate how the most-read state-owned newspaper in China, People’s Daily, used an online social networking site, Sina Weibo, to communicate about COVID-19 and whether this could engage the public. The objective of this study is to develop an integrated framework to examine the content, message style, and interactive features of COVID-19–related posts and determine their effects on public engagement in the largest social media network in China. Methods Content analysis was employed to scrutinize 608 COVID-19 posts, and coding was performed on three main dimensions: content, message style, and interactive features. The content dimension was coded into six subdimensions: action, new evidence, reassurance, disease prevention, health care services, and uncertainty, and the style dimension was coded into the subdimensions of narrative and nonnarrative. As for interactive features, they were coded into links to external sources, use of hashtags, use of questions to solicit feedback, and use of multimedia. Public engagement was measured in the form of the number of shares, comments, and likes on the People’s Daily’s Sina Weibo account from January 20, 2020, to March 11, 2020, to reveal the association between different levels of public engagement and communication strategies. A one-way analysis of variance followed by a post-hoc Tukey test and negative binomial regression analysis were employed to generate the results. Results We found that although the content frames of action, new evidence, and reassurance delivered in a nonnarrative style were predominant in COVID-19 communication by the government, posts related to new evidence and a nonnarrative style were strong negative predictors of the number of shares. In terms of generating a high number of shares, it was found that disease prevention posts delivered in a narrative style were able to achieve this purpose. Additionally, an interaction effect was found between content and style. The use of a narrative style in disease prevention posts had a significant positive effect on generating comments and likes by the Chinese public, while links to external sources fostered sharing. Conclusions These results have implications for governments, health organizations, medical professionals, the media, and researchers on their epidemic communication to engage the public. Selecting suitable communication strategies may foster active liking and sharing of posts on social media, which in turn, might raise the public’s awareness of COVID-19 and motivate them to take preventive measures. The sharing of COVID-19 posts is particularly important because this action can reach out to a large audience, potentially helping to contain the spread of the virus.

scholarly journals Does the COVID-19 Vaccine Still Work That “Most of the Confirmed Cases Had Been Vaccinated”? A Content Analysis of Vaccine Effectiveness Discussion on Sina Weibo during the Outbreak of COVID-19 in Nanjing

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 241
Author(s):  
Hao Gao ◽  
Qingting Zhao ◽  
Chuanlin Ning ◽  
Difan Guo ◽  
Jing Wu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
Analysis Tool ◽  
Sina Weibo ◽  
The Public ◽  
External Sources ◽  
The Media ◽  
Set Up

In July 2021, breakthrough cases were reported in the outbreak of COVID-19 in Nanjing, sparking concern and discussion about the vaccine’s effectiveness and becoming a trending topic on Sina Weibo. In order to explore public attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccine and their emotional orientations, we collected 1542 posts under the trending topic through data mining. We set up four categories of attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines, and used a big data analysis tool to code and manually checked the coding results to complete the content analysis. The results showed that 45.14% of the Weibo posts (n = 1542) supported the COVID-19 vaccine, 12.97% were neutral, and 7.26% were doubtful, which indicated that the public did not question the vaccine’s effectiveness due to the breakthrough cases in Nanjing. There were 66.47% posts that reflected significant negative emotions. Among these, 50.44% of posts with negative emotions were directed towards the media, 25.07% towards the posting users, and 11.51% towards the public, which indicated that the negative emotions were not directed towards the COVID-19 vaccine. External sources outside the vaccine might cause vaccine hesitancy. Public opinions expressed in online media reflect the public’s cognition and attitude towards vaccines and their core needs in terms of information. Therefore, online public opinion monitoring could be an essential way to understand the opinions and attitudes towards public health issues.

scholarly journals Designing a Data Visualization Dashboard for Managing the Sustainability Communication of Healthcare Organizations on Facebook

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 4447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Conte ◽  
Pierluigi Vitale ◽  
Agostino Vollero ◽  
Alfonso Siano
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Data Visualization ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Communication Strategies ◽  
Healthcare Organizations ◽  
Interactive Communication ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
The Social ◽  
Digital Environments

Healthcare organizations are being increasingly requested to publicize their sustainability efforts on digital environments and social media, in part because previously passive patients are now becoming active customers. This paper investigates how leading healthcare organizations are using Facebook to communicate their sustainability, in terms of their focus on different components of the 3Ps (people, profit, planet) and interactive communication strategies used on social media. A content analysis was made of the Facebook posts (n = 6145) of healthcare organizations in the Forbes Global 2000 (2017 annual ranking) from 2015 to mid-2018. Our findings show that the social component of sustainability prevails over environmental and economic issues, although it does not seem to generate increased consumer engagement (in terms of users’ likes, comments, reactions, etc.). A data visualization dashboard was developed to help managers in benchmarking competitors and assessing how they can increase response rates and public engagement on social media, thus encouraging the active participation of users. The study also provides useful insights for communication managers in identifying how to use deliberative tools to develop consumer relationships on social media and aligning companies and consumers regarding shared sustainability themes.

scholarly journals The Importance of Genuineness in Public Engagement—An Exploratory Study of Pediatric Communication on Social Media in China

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (19) ◽  
pp. 7078
Author(s):  
Wenze Lu ◽  
Cindy Sing Bik Ngai ◽  
Lu Yang
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Health Communication ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Chinese Public

There is a growing need for the public to interact with pediatricians through social media in China, and genuineness is a crucial factor contributing to effective communication, but few studies have examined the relationship between genuineness and its effect on public engagement. This study developed a four-dimension framework including self-disclosure, genuine response, functional interactivity, and genuineness in Chinese culture to investigate the effect of genuineness in the communication of Chinese social media influencers in pediatrics on public engagement. Content analysis was employed to examine these dimensions and the related public engagement in 300 social media posts on the largest microblogging site in China. The findings indicate that genuine response was positively associated with the number of comments and positive comments, while negatively related to the number of shares. Functional interactivity made the site more appealing, resulting in likes and shares. Genuineness in Chinese culture was reflected in engagement through sharing posts by the public. This study is the first to develop an integrated framework to measure genuineness in online health communication and contributes to the understanding of the effect of genuineness on Chinese public engagement in social media.

Pandemijos retorika: argumentavimo strategijos socialinio tinklo „Facebook“ komentaruose

2021 ◽  
pp. 210-223
Author(s):  
Eglė Gabrėnaitė ◽  
◽  
Domantė Vaišvylaitė ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Communication Strategies ◽  
Rhetorical Analysis ◽  
Media Consumption ◽  
Analysis Method ◽  
The Public ◽  
Research Material ◽  
Rhetorical Discourse

An analysis of the public COVID-19 discourse reveals how the public responds to the crisis and what kind of communication is actualized during a pandemic. The object of this research is the argumentation strategies in the comments of the articles about coronavirus on social media “Facebook”. The aim of the research is to expand the argumentative level of discourse: to analyze rhetorical and eristic arguments. The comments were collected from the accounts of the most popular Lithuanian news portals on “Facebook” (alfa.lt, Delfi, 15min, lrytas.lt). The analyzed comments were published during the first and second pandemic waves (from March 2020 to January 2021). The research material was analyzed by means of the rhetorical discourse analysis method to isolate and define the categories of rhetoric characteristic to rhetorical appeals models. The chosen method of rhetorical analysis was combined with content analysis. During the research, the respective rhetorical categories of the researched phenomenon were identified and classified, and the content of these categories was expanded – a rhetorical content analysis was performed. The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented situation in which the rhetorical analysis of the communication element is a whole new area of research. The identified dominant models of rhetorical and eristic reasoning not only reveal the regularities of media “consumption” but also help to understand the tendencies of choosing communication strategies in critical situations.

Self-Presentation of Female Athletes: A Content Analysis of Athlete Avatars

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 460-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan B. Shreffler ◽  
Meg G. Hancock ◽  
Samuel H. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Web Sites ◽  
Female Athletes ◽  
Common Theme ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Athletic Competence

Unlike traditional media, which frames female athletes in sexualized manners and in socially accepted roles such as mothers and girlfriends, user-controlled social-media Web sites allow female athletes to control the image and brand they wish to portray to the public. Using Goffman’s theory of self-presentation, the current study aimed to investigate how female athletes were portraying themselves via their Twitter avatar pictures. A total of 207 verified Twitter avatars of female athletes from 6 sports were examined through a content analysis. The avatars from each player were coded using the following themes: athlete as social being, athlete as promotional figure, “selfie,” athletic competence, ambivalence, “girl next door,” and “sexy babe.” The results revealed that athletic competence was the most common theme, followed by selfie and athlete as social being. Thus, when women have the opportunity to control their image through social media they choose to focus on their athletic identities.

scholarly journals Exploring public engagement with missing person appeals on Twitter

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reka Solymosi ◽  
Oana Petcu ◽  
Jack Wilkinson
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
The Public ◽  
Missing Persons ◽  
Early Return ◽  
Police Agencies ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Twitter Account

Police agencies globally are seeing an increase in reports of people going missing. These people are often vulnerable, and their safe and early return is a key factor in preventing them from coming to serious harm. One approach to quickly find missing people is to disseminate appeals for information using social media. Yet despite the popularity of twitter-based missing person appeals, presently little is known about how to best construct these messages to ensure they are shared far and wide. This paper aims to build an evidence-base for understanding how police accounts tweet appeals for information about missing persons, and how the public engage with these tweets by sharing them. We analyse 1,008 Tweets made by Greater Manchester Police between the period of 2011 and 2018 in order to investigate what features of the tweet, the twitter account, and the missing person are associated with levels of retweeting. We find that tweets with different choice of image, wording, sentiment, and hashtags vary in how much they are retweeted. Tweets that use custody images have lower retweets than Tweets with regular photos, while tweets asking the question “have you seen...?” and asking explicitly to be retweeted have more engagement in the form of retweets. These results highlight the need for conscientious, evidence-based crafting of missing appeals, and pave the way for further research into the causal mechanisms behind what affects engagement, to develop guidance for police forces worldwide.

scholarly journals BOOKTUBERS E A INFLUÊNCIA LITERÁRIA: UM ESTUDO DE CASO DO VLOG DA JU CIRQUEIRA

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Pâmela Da Silva Pochmann ◽  
Magali De Moraes Menti
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Communication Strategies ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
The Public ◽  
Text Reading ◽  
Methodological Procedures

RESUMOEste estudo teve como problema de pesquisa verificar como blogs/vlogs literários, enquanto meios de comunicação, podem influenciar a escolha leitora. Para isso, selecionou-se o vlog da Ju Cirqueira, blogueira do blog Nuvem Literária, para um estudo de caso. O objetivo geral foi identificar quais estratégias a blogueira utiliza que podem influenciar na escolha literária dos seus seguidores a partir de suas publicações/vídeos. Os objetivos específicos foram verificar as estratégias que a blogueira utiliza para transmitir suas mensagens e criar conexões, e se utiliza algum padrão em seus vídeos. Para tanto, abordou-se questões relacionadas à leitura, texto, práticas de leitura, formação de leitores e ato comunicativo. Os procedimentos metodológicos abrangeram uma parte quantitativa, em que foram destacados números de blogs existentes, perfil dos usuários e categorias de blogs, e uma parte qualitativa em que, por meio de categorização de análise proposta por Jeffman (2015) e de análise de conteúdo, examinou-se dez vídeos do canal da Ju Cirqueira. A partir dos dados coletados, pode-se ter uma amostragem de como são os blogs no Brasil, o perfil do público leitor de blogs e vlogs e características que fazem com que os booktubers fidelizem seus seguidores e, consequentemente, apresentem novas opções de leitura. Entre os padrões utilizados pela blogueira destacam-se a cultura do quarto, as estratégias de comunicação e a cultura de participação.Palavras-chave: Booktubers. Influência literária. Ju Cirqueira. Vlog. Formação do Leitor. ABSTRACTThis study aimed to verify how literary blogs/vlogs, as a means of communication, can influence te choice for reading. To this end, the vlog by Ju Cirqueira, blogger of the blog Nuvem Literária, was chosen for a case study. The goal of the survey was to look at how the blogger influences the literary choice of her followers, what strategies she uses to broadcast her messages and make connections, and whether she uses some pattern in her videos. The focus of the analysis was on concepts pertaining to reading, the text, reading practices, reader training and mass media. There were quantitative methodological procedures in which  numbers of existing blogs, profile of users and categories of blogs were sought; followed by  qualitative procedures carried out through categories of analysis and content analysis to look for patterns in ten videos of the channel of Ju Cirqueira. From the data collected, one can have a sampling of how blogs are in Brazil, the profile of the public readers of blogs and vlogs and characteristics that make booktubers loyal to their followers and, consequently, present new reading options. Among the different languages used in communication, we highlight the culture of the room, the communication strategies and the culture of participation.Keywords: Booktubers. Literacy influence. Ju Cirqueira. Literary Vlog. Formation of the reader.

scholarly journals Public engagement and dialogic accounting through social media during COVID-19 crisis: a missed opportunity?

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Landi ◽  
Antonio Costantini ◽  
Marco Fasan ◽  
Michele Bonazzi
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Public Agencies ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Agencies

PurposeThe purpose of this exploratory study is to investigate why and how public health agencies employed social media during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak to foster public engagement and dialogic accounting.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analysed the official Facebook pages of the leading public agencies for health crisis in Italy, United Kingdom and New Zealand and they collected data on the number of posts, popularity, commitment and followers before and during the outbreak. The authors also performed a content analysis to identify the topics covered by the posts.FindingsEmpirical results suggest that social media has been extensively used as a public engagement tool in all three countries under analysis but – because of legitimacy threats and resource scarcity – it has also been used as a dialogic accounting tool only in New Zealand. Findings suggest that fake news developed more extensively in contexts where the public body did not foster dialogic accounting.Practical implicationsPublic agencies may be interested in knowing the pros and cons of using social media as a public engagement and dialogic accounting tool. They may also leverage on dialogic accounting to limit fake news.Originality/valueThis study is one of the first to look at the nature and role of social media as an accountability tool during public health crises. In many contexts, COVID-19 forced for the first time public health agencies to heavily engage with the public and to develop new skills, so this study paves the way for numerous future research ideas.

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