Release and Demand of Public Health Information in Social Media During the Outbreak of COVID-19 in China

Abstract

Information release is a key to the macro-economy during the outbreak of the Coronavirus Diosease-2019 (COVID-19). To explore the relationship between information supply by the government and public information demand in the pandemic, this study collected over 4,000 posts published on the most popular social media platform, i.e., WeChat. Many approaches, such as text mining, are employed to explore the information at different stages during the pandemic. According to the results, the government attached great importance to the information related to the pandemic. The main topics of information released by the government included the latest situation of the pandemic, announcements by the State Council, and prevention policies for COVID-19. Information mismatch between the public and Chinese governments contributed to the economic depression caused by the pandemic. Specifically, the topics of “the latest situation” and “popular scientific knowledge regarding the pandemic” have gained the most attention of the public. The information demand of the public has changed from the pandemic itself to the recovery of social life and industrial activities after the authority announced the control of the pandemic. However, during the recession phase, the information demand has shifted to asymptomatic infections and global pandemic trends. By contrast, some of the main topics provided by the government, such as “How beautiful you are,” were excessive because the public demand is insufficient. Therefore, severe mismatches existed between information release of the government and public information demand during the pandemic, which impeded the recovery of the economy. The results in this study provide strategical suggestions of information release and opinion guidance for the authorities.

Public health agencies’ use of social media for communication during pandemics: a scoping review of the literature

“…The status of having a track record in pandemic management was found to be critical to a PHA’s effectiveness when using social media to communicate health messages during a pandemic [ 55 − 59 ]. PHAs were perceived by the public as high-impact organizations that should serve as the primary source of health information during pandemics [ 60 − 62 ].…”

“…Government efforts to implement public health policies, enhance healthcare delivery, initiate or sponsor epidemiological studies, announce significant scientific breakthroughs, and modify the usual social and economic order comprise another category of health messages [ 27 , 29 , 52 , 53 , 59 , 67 , 68 , 77 , 81 − 83 ]. The extent to which this information was communicated impacted the effectiveness of these messages.…”

“…Pandemics can be segmented into phases based on the disease progression in the community. However, there was no shared basis for this segmentation in the literature, and the number of phases was presented as 5 [ 15 , 29 , 37 ], 4 [ 51 , 59 , 81 , 83 ] or 3 [ 65 ]. Ahmed et al [ 79 ] and Radwan and Mousa [ 68 ] restricted the segmentation to the lockdown period only.…”

Analyzing public demands on China’s online government inquiry platform: A BERTopic-Based topic modeling study

“…This aspect was equally significant in understanding public needs in the domain of governance. During the COVID-19 crisis, the research conducted by Zhang and Yu [ 25 ], along with Tang et al [ 26 ], delved into the dynamics between the supply of information by governments and the demands for such information from the public. These studies shed light on both the effectiveness and the challenges inherent in government communication strategies during public health emergencies.…”

Risk perception of COVID-19 among college students in China: Latent profile analysis

“…with information about the epidemic (47,48). Thus, college students, as a highly information-sensitive group (9), have deeply recognized the seriousness of the epidemic and the adverse effects of COVID-19 infection.…”