How do Canadian public health agencies respond to the COVID-19 emergency using social media: a protocol for a case study using content and sentiment analysis

Kothari, Anita; Foisey, Lyndsay; Donelle, Lorie; Bauer, Michael

doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2020-041818

Cited by 13 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Social media is an important communication channel for crisis communication, especially during COVID-19, and Canadians are spending more time on social media than ever before [17]. A 2019 Canadian emergency preparedness indicators report included social media as an essential aspect of communication strategy to provide information, monitor the infodemic, and engage with the public [18]. Social media platforms allow for access to an unprecedented amount of content and can have a large influence on behaviour [19].…”

Section: Crisis Communication On Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In 2020, Instagram was the fourth most popular social media platform in Canada with 51% of Canadians having an account and 69% of those accessing the site daily [20]. Young people [18][19][20][21][22][23][24] remain the largest adopters of social media and 18-24 and 25-34 year olds are the dominant groups on Instagram [20]. By Fall 2021, people under the age of 19, followed by 20-29, and then 20-39 year olds made up the largest proportion of COVID-19 cases in Canada [21].…”

Section: Crisis Communication On Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

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A content analysis of Canadian influencer crisis messages on Instagram and the public’s response during COVID-19

et al. 2022

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Successful mitigation of emerging infectious disease requires that the public adopt recommended behaviours, which is directly influenced by effective crisis communication. Social media has become an important communication channel during COVID-19 where official actors, influencers, and the public are co-creating crisis messages. Our research examined COVID-19-related crisis messages across Canadian influencer accounts within news media, politicians, public health and government, science communicators, and brand influencer and celebrities, posted on Instagram between December 2019 and March 2021 for Health Belief Model and Extended Parallel Processing Model constructs and the corresponding public comment sentiment and engagement. Thirty-three influencer accounts resulted in a total of 2,642 Instagram posts collected, along with 461,436 comments, which showed overall low use of constructs in both captions and images. Further, most posts used no combinations (n = 0 or 1 construct per post) of constructs in captions and images and very infrequently used captions that combined threat (severity and susceptibility) with cues to action and efficacy. Brand influencers and celebrities, politicians, and science communicators had above average post engagement while public health and government and news media had lower. Finally, most influencers saw the largest proportion of neutral sentiment comments. Crisis messages must be designed to include combinations of constructs that increase message acceptance and influence risk perception and efficacy to increase the adoption of recommended and mandated behaviours.

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Section: Crisis Communication On Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Crisis Communication On Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

A content analysis of Canadian influencer crisis messages on Instagram and the public’s response during COVID-19

et al. 2022

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“…There is ample research on social media use by public health agencies [ 2 , 7 , 14 , 15 , 16 ]. However, studies are generally conducted on one site or another, either Facebook or Twitter.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In general, per account, state agencies were more active in posting than local and federal agencies. For example, on Facebook-based on population statistics-state accounts made 712 posts per account (34,930 total posts by 49 accounts), whereas local accounts made 377 posts per account(14,356 total posts by 38 accounts), and federal accounts made 359 posts per account (3592 total posts by 10 accounts). Results were relatively similar for Twitter.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Platform Effects on Public Health Communication: A Comparative and National Study of Message Design and Audience Engagement Across Twitter and Facebook

DePaula¹,

Hagen²,

Roytman³

et al. 2022

JMIR Infodemiology

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Background Public health agencies widely adopt social media for health and risk communication. Moreover, different platforms have different affordances, which may impact the quality and nature of the messaging and how the public engages with the content. However, these platform effects are not often compared in studies of health and risk communication and not previously for the COVID-19 pandemic. Objective This study measures the potential media effects of Twitter and Facebook on public health message design and engagement by comparing message elements and audience engagement in COVID-19–related posts by local, state, and federal public health agencies in the United States during the pandemic, to advance theories of public health messaging on social media and provide recommendations for tailored social media communication strategies. Methods We retrieved all COVID-19–related posts from major US federal agencies related to health and infectious disease, all major state public health agencies, and selected local public health departments on Twitter and Facebook. A total of 100,785 posts related to COVID-19, from 179 different accounts of 96 agencies, were retrieved for the entire year of 2020. We adopted a framework of social media message elements to analyze the posts across Facebook and Twitter. For manual content analysis, we subsampled 1677 posts. We calculated the prevalence of various message elements across the platforms and assessed the statistical significance of differences. We also calculated and assessed the association between message elements with normalized measures of shares and likes for both Facebook and Twitter. Results Distributions of message elements were largely similar across both sites. However, political figures (P<.001), experts (P=.01), and nonpolitical personalities (P=.01) were significantly more present on Facebook posts compared to Twitter. Infographics (P<.001), surveillance information (P<.001), and certain multimedia elements (eg, hyperlinks, P<.001) were more prevalent on Twitter. In general, Facebook posts received more (normalized) likes (0.19%) and (normalized) shares (0.22%) compared to Twitter likes (0.08%) and shares (0.05%). Elements with greater engagement on Facebook included expressives and collectives, whereas posts related to policy were more engaged with on Twitter. Science information (eg, scientific explanations) comprised 8.5% (73/851) of Facebook and 9.4% (78/826) of Twitter posts. Correctives of misinformation only appeared in 1.2% (11/851) of Facebook and 1.4% (12/826) of Twitter posts. Conclusions In general, we find a data and policy orientation for Twitter messages and users and a local and personal orientation for Facebook, although also many similarities across platforms. Message elements that impact engagement are similar across platforms but with some notable distinctions. This study provides novel evidence for differences in COVID-19 public health messaging across social media sites, advancing knowledge of public health communication on social media and recommendations for health and risk communication strategies on these online platforms.

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“…The issue of science communication is herein important for a number of reasons—building support for the uptake of scientific evidence in policymaking, informing people about the science behind the policies and it impacts their life, and improving public understanding of science. Herein, in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic social media were exploited for communicating related scientific and technological literature (Li et al 2021 ; Kothari et al 2021 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lessons for science and technology policy? Probing the Linkedin network of an RDI organisation

et al. 2022

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In this paper, we seek to examine the network of the Greek National Documentation Centre (EKT) as formed by its LinkedIn followers. By applying specific data collection and processing techniques, we explore the network of all the individuals that follow EKT’s LinkedIn page. Significant manual and automatic approaches have been implemented with regard to data extraction, data curation and data homogenization. The aim is to identify the network’s advancement over time, the institutions involved and the countries. The timeframe of the study spans from when the relevant LinkedIn page was constructed in 2015 to 2020. Findings indicate that there is a steady increase in the number of new followers, peaking in 2020. On an international scale, the evolution of the network of followers is imprinted and distributed in worldwide maps. In total, 68 countries have followed EKT over the examined time period. Also, in terms of followers’ institutional sector the Business Sector (BES) stands out (46.5%). Higher Education (HES) and Government Sector (GOV) are associated with 26.4 and 22.2% of the followers, respectively. Lastly, this paper provides a first institutional and country-level mapping of who constitutes the organisation’s interlocutors in the national and global RDI ecosystem.

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How do Canadian public health agencies respond to the COVID-19 emergency using social media: a protocol for a case study using content and sentiment analysis

Cited by 13 publications

References 21 publications

A content analysis of Canadian influencer crisis messages on Instagram and the public’s response during COVID-19

A content analysis of Canadian influencer crisis messages on Instagram and the public’s response during COVID-19

Platform Effects on Public Health Communication: A Comparative and National Study of Message Design and Audience Engagement Across Twitter and Facebook

Lessons for science and technology policy? Probing the Linkedin network of an RDI organisation

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