Evolving public behavior and attitudes towards COVID-19 and face masks in Taiwan: A social media study

Abstract

Facing the COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan demonstrated resilience at the initial stage of epidemic prevention, and effectively slowed down its spread. This study aims to document public epidemic awareness of COVID-19 in Taiwan through collecting social media- and Internet-based data, and provide valuable experience of Taiwan’s response to COVID-19, involving citizens, news media, and the government, to aid the public in overcoming COVID-19, or infectious diseases that may emerge in the future. The volume of Google searches related to COVID-19 and face masks was regarded as an indicator of public epidemic awareness in the study. A time-series analysis was used to explore the relationships among public epidemic awareness and other COVID-19 relevant variables, which were collected based on big data analysis. Additionally, the content analysis was adopted to analyze the transmission of different types of fear information related to COVID-19 and their effects on the public. Our results indicate that public epidemic awareness was significantly correlated with the number of confirmed cases in Taiwan and the number of news reports on COVID-19 (correlation coefficient: .33–.56). Additionally, the findings from the content analysis suggested that the fear of the loss of control best explains why panic behavior occurs among the public. When confronting the highly infectious COVID-19, public epidemic awareness is vital. While fear is an inevitable result when an emerging infectious disease occurs, the government can convert resistance into assistance by understanding why fear arises and which fear factors cause excessive public panic. Moreover, in the digitalization era, online and social media activities could reflect public epidemic awareness that can e harnessed for epidemic control.

The Social Meanings of Artifacts: Face Masks in the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Further negative influences of wearing face masks and the correlation with social anxiety and mental health were identified by Saint and Moscovitch ( 36 ) in their exploratory review. A Taiwanese study by Chin et al ( 37 ) shed light on the importance of fear as a driving factor for the public during the COVID-19 pandemic to adhere to protection measures.…”

Information Seeking and Processing during the Outbreak of COVID-19 in Taiwan: Examining the Effects of Emotions and Informational Subjective Norms

“…A more thoughtful information process involves systematic processing that relies more on cognitive resources and uses an analytic and in-depth manner to process information, whereas a more superficial information process relies less on cognitive resources but uses a shortcut to process information [ 4 , 18 ]. The RISP model has been applied to examine a variety of risk issues, including obesity [ 19 ], flooding [ 20 ], air pollution [ 21 ], Zika virus [ 22 ], and COVID-19 [ 1 , 23 ].…”

Channels Adopted for Information Seeking during COVID-19: Comparing Social Media with News Media and Interpersonal Communication in Taiwan

“…COVID-19 is such an unpredictable disease that when it emerged in Taiwan, people were situated in a highly uncertain context, which prompted people to seek and discuss COVID-19-related information on the internet in great volume. Chin et al [ 21 ] investigated the contents of social media and Google search volume in Taiwan during this time and found that the information from news reports transmitted to the public was instantly transformed into relevant discussions in social media and was also positively correlated with Google search volumes. Various types of information from different sources are available to the public, containing a great deal of misinformation.…”

“…Various types of information from different sources are available to the public, containing a great deal of misinformation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation is rife, which causes distress for most people because misinformation contains rumors, incorrect protective measures, and false disease information [ 3 , 21 ]. If people cannot differentiate true from false information, it may result in detrimental effects on their health.…”

“…This study predicted that most people in Taiwan would not regard news media as reliable and accurate sources of COVID-19 information. Moreover, news reports from social media come from various sources and are often mixed with misinformation [ 3 , 21 ]. Hence, there is great variation in terms of information quality from social media.…”