Exploring the Mediating Role of Situation Awareness and Crisis Emotions Between Social Media Use and COVID-19 Protective Behaviors: Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

BackgroundIn an outbreak of an infectious disease especially, online media would usually be an important channel for people to get first-hand knowledge and evaluate risks of the specific emergency. Although there has been increasing attention to the effect of social media use during epidemics and outbreaks, relatively little is known about the underlying mechanism by which social media plays a role in people's cognitive, affective and preventive responses.ObjectiveWith an objective to advance current knowledge surrounding social media effects on people's cognition, affection and health protective behaviors during epidemics, we aim to examine the associations between social media exposure to COVID-19 risks related information and preventive behavior of the public, and also the role that situation awareness and crisis emotions including anxiety and fear played.MethodsAn online cross-sectional survey was conducted in China a total of 632 participants were recruited. Measures included exposure to COVID-19 information through social media, situation awareness, anxiety, fear and protective behaviors that participants have taken. We have performed the descriptive statistical analysis, correlation and mediation analysis to test the research hypotheses.ResultsFindings indicated that situation awareness was positively associated with social media use (B = 0.54, p < 0.001), anxiety (B = 0.95, p < 0.001) and fear (B = 0.87, p < 0.001), and preventive behavior (B = 0.68, p < 0.001). Social media use would also have an indirect effect on anxiety (indirect effect = 0.40; 95% CI = [0.34, 0.46]) and fear (indirect effect = 0.35; 95% CI = [0.29, 0.42]) through situation awareness. The serial mediation effect of situation awareness and fear in the correlation between social media use and preventive behavior has been testified (indirect effect = 0.04, 95% CI = [0.01, 0.08]).ConclusionsSocial media use might influence the adoption of preventive behaviors through triggering situation awareness and fear. Therefore, health communication regarding COVID-19 prevention should target people with less internet access and low eHealth literacy. Understanding the positive role of negative crisis emotions during outbreaks could also help communicators and policymakers develop appropriate strategies to make people proactive to avoid the remaining health hazard.

Unveiling the Influence of TikTok Dependency on University Students’ Post-COVID-19 Health Protective Behavior

“…It suggests that university students who highly rely on TikTok are more like to have health protective behavior in the post COVID-19 era. In agreement with previous studies, social media use may influence individuals' adoption of health preventive behavior because the information on social media platform might trigger individuals' fear and anxiety (Oh, Lee & Han, 2021;Feng & Tong, 2022) and higher media exposure is more likely to enable university students adopt COVID-19 preventive behaviors (Mesch, Silva & Storopoli, 2022). The finding also aligns with media dependency theory, which examines individuals' dependency on social media platforms and their potential effects on behavior.…”

“…It is reported by Lui (2021) that, as one of the countries that have successfully contained COVID-19, China has offered reliable and valuable information on social media for public health lessons to fight against the pandemic. For example, a great number of Chinese social media users were exposed to COVID-19-related information from all kinds of digital media platforms, which also attached great importance to preventive behaviors and encouragement provided by using these social media tools through triggering their situation awareness as well as their fear (Feng & Tong, 2022). Therefore, in this study, TikTok dependency is expected to positively influence post-COVID-19 health protective behavior.…”

Experience together online and help each other offline: An exploration of social media co-experience and social identification as predictors of mutual aid behavior during the COVID-19 lockdown

“…Based on the above scholarship on mutual aid behavior, the current study further suggests that the public's mutual aid willingness and social identification process can also be originated from social media co-experiences (including participation, cognitive communion, and resonant contagion). Indeed, social media has been proven to play a vital role during the pandemic, from delivering information 69 to promoting personal prevention 70 and more. By engaging in social media participation and resonant with other users, individuals during the COVID-19 lockdown are no longer a disconnected "island".…”

Topic and Trend Analysis of Weibo Discussions About COVID-19 Medications Before and After China’s Exit from the Zero-COVID Policy: Retrospective Infoveillance Study

“…Notably, social media users' complaints about medication shortage can be a representation of medication needs. Although emotional expressions are found to be an important predictor of social behavior [72], this topical trend can potentially help increase model predictiveness for researchers and identify public interest in social media monitors. This will be further discussed in the next subheading.…”