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Unpacking the black box: How to promote citizen engagement through government social media during the COVID-19 crisis.

ABSTRACT: During times of public crises, governments must act swiftly to communicate crisis information effectively and efficiently to members of the public; failure to do so will inevitably lead citizens to become fearful, uncertain and anxious in the prevailing conditions. This pioneering study systematically investigates how Chinese central government agencies used social media to promote citizen engagement during the COVID-19 crisis. Using data scraped from 'Healthy China', an official Sina Weibo account of the National Health Commission of China, we examine how citizen engagement relates to a series of theoretically relevant factors, including media richness, dialogic loop, content type and emotional valence. Results show that media richness negatively predicts citizen engagement through government social media, but dialogic loop facilitates engagement. Information relating to the latest news about the crisis and the government's handling of the event positively affects citizen engagement through government social media. Importantly, all relationships were contingent upon the emotional valence of each Weibo post.

SUBMITTER: Chen Q

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7151317 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Unpacking the black box: How to promote citizen engagement through government social media during the COVID-19 crisis.

Chen Qiang Q Min Chen C Zhang Wei W Wang Ge G Ma Xiaoyue X Evans Richard R

Computers in human behavior 20200412

During times of public crises, governments must act swiftly to communicate crisis information effectively and efficiently to members of the public; failure to do so will inevitably lead citizens to become fearful, uncertain and anxious in the prevailing conditions. This pioneering study systematically investigates how Chinese central government agencies used social media to promote citizen engagement during the COVID-19 crisis. Using data scraped from 'Healthy China', an official Sina Weibo acco ...[more]

PMID: 32292239

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Project description:BackgroundThe COVID-19 health crisis has posed an unprecedented challenge for governments worldwide to manage and communicate about the pandemic effectively, while maintaining public trust. Good leadership image in times of a health emergency is paramount to ensure public confidence in governments' abilities to manage the crisis.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to identify types of image repair strategies utilized by the Malaysian government in their communication about COVID-19 in the media and analyze public responses to these messages on social media.MethodsContent analysis was employed to analyze 120 media statements and 382 comments retrieved from Facebook pages of 2 mainstream newspapers-Berita Harian and The Star. These media statements and comments were collected within a span of 6 weeks prior to and during the first implementation of Movement Control Order by the Malaysian Government. The media statements were analyzed according to Image Repair Theory to categorize strategies employed in government communications related to COVID-19 crisis. Public opinion responses were measured using modified lexicon-based sentiment analysis to categorize positive, negative, and neutral statements.ResultsThe Malaysian government employed all 5 Image Repair Theory strategies in their communications in both newspapers. The strategy most utilized was reducing offensiveness (75/120, 62.5%), followed by corrective action (30/120, 25.0%), evading responsibilities (10/120, 8.3%), denial (4/120, 3.3%), and mortification (1/120, 0.8%). This study also found multiple substrategies in government media statements including denial, shifting blame, provocation, defeasibility, accident, good intention, bolstering, minimization, differentiation, transcendence, attacking accuser, resolve problem, prevent recurrence, admit wrongdoing, and apologize. This study also found that 64.7% of public opinion was positive in response to media statements made by the Malaysian government and also revealed a significant positive association (P=.04) between image repair strategies utilized by the Malaysian government and public opinion.ConclusionsCommunication in the media may assist the government in fostering positive support from the public. Suitable image repair strategies could garner positive public responses and help build trust in times of crisis.

Project description: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.

Dataset Information

Unpacking the black box: How to promote citizen engagement through government social media during the COVID-19 crisis.

Publications

Unpacking the black box: How to promote citizen engagement through government social media during the COVID-19 crisis.

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