Investigating information dissemination and citizen engagement through government social media during the COVID-19 crisis

Purpose: This study explores how effectively the Indian government utilized social media to communicate emergency information and promote citizen engagement and awareness during the first wave of COVID-19 crisis. Design/methodology/approach: This research investigates the tweets scraped from the official Twitter handle "CovidnewsbyMIB" of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Government of India;the authors unearthed patterns in the communications between the government and its citizens by adopting various social media analysis techniques. Further, the authors also tried to examine the influence of media richness and dialogic loop on citizen engagement through government social media (CEGSM) using multivariate analysis method. Findings: The results highlighted clusters of words/terms present in the tweets related to COVID-19 combating strategies, guidelines, and updates. The authors also found that media richness has a significant positive relationship with CEGSM, but dialogic loop has an insignificant relationship with CEGSM. Originality/value: This study provides suggestions to government agencies about ways to improve CEGSM by enhancing media richness and dialogic loop elements such as surveys, polls, and responses in the crisis communication. Peer review: The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-06-2021-0307. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Online Information Review is the property of Emerald Publishing Limited and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Driving citizen engagement through Twitter: The case of COVID‐19 vaccination drive in India

Effective crisis communication is essential to efficiently handle the uncertainty and anxiousness of citizens during the COVID‐19 crisis. Government Twitter handles are an excellent platform for faster information dissemination and engaging citizens. While most government ministries actively use Twitter, limited attention is given to its modus operandi. Using data retrieved from the official Twitter handle of 'The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare' (MOHFW) of India, the current study examines the effect of the content characteristics, including content type and media type, on citizen engagement measured as tweet likes and retweets. The findings are based on 3742 tweets from MOHFW, recording more than 4.06 million likes and 1.23 million retweets over the initial six months of the largest COVID‐19 vaccination drive. Results show that content‐sharing guidance for stakeholders gained the maximum engagement, while the latest news about the COVID‐19 crisis resulted in the least engagement. Photos gained maximum engagement, while statuses resulted in the least engagement. The results illuminate the textual features of the government's Twitter communication and will enable policymakers to manage their social media content strategy diligently. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Public Affairs (14723891) is the property of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Predicting the antecedents of discontinuous usage intention of mobile government social media during public health emergencies

Mobile government social media (GSM) plays a crucial role in facilitating government–citizen crisis communication and pandemic-related information delivery during public health emergencies. However, the lack of interaction and supervision, as well as deviations from the government's crisis communication position, can lead to some mobile GSM accounts gradually becoming "zombie” and "empty shell” accounts, resulting in high discontinuance rates. To investigate the underlying mechanism of mobile GSM discontinuous usage intention during public health emergencies, this study utilized hybrid structural equation modeling with an artificial neural network approach to estimate linear and non-linear relations. Data were collected from 748 Chinese mobile GSM users during the COVID-19 pandemic from August to September 2021. The findings revealed that perceived risks and barriers, information overload, information irrelevance, and social media fatigue significantly affected mobile GSM users' discontinuous usage intentions during public health emergencies, while perceived internet censorship and information equivocality did not. The hybrid method predicted mobile GSM discontinuous usage intention during public health emergencies with an accuracy of 87.9%. This study provides a holistic understanding of the antecedents of mobile GSM discontinuous usage intention during public health emergencies. Practical insights were presented for mobile GSM managers to avoid user churn during public health emergencies. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd

Pandemic Nationalism: Use of Government Social Media for Political Information and Belief in COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories in China

The COVID-19 pandemic unleashed a torrent of conspiracy theories across different social media platforms. Parallel to this conspiracy wave was a heightened sense of nationalism, which manifested through both in-group solidarity and perceived out-group threats. In this study, we examine how individuals' use of government social media to gather political information correlated with nation-related conspiracy beliefs during the pandemic. Data were collected from 745 subjects in China and analyzed through path analyses, which allowed us to examine the direct association with political information consumption from government social media and the indirect association with nationalism on conspiracy beliefs. The results indicated that the use of government social media to gather political information was associated with greater beliefs in nation-variant COVID-19 conspiracies, both directly and through different mediations of nationalism. Our findings highlight the importance of examining government social media use and how nationalism can have differentiated mediation effects on beliefs in conspiracy theories. © The Author(s) 2023.

Dialogic communication on local government social media during the first wave of COVID-19: Evidence from the health commissions of prefecture-level cities in China.

Although some scholars have explored the level and determinants of Dialogic Communication on Government Social Media (DCGSM), none have conducted their studies in the context of public crisis. The current study contributes to the understanding on DCGSM by 16,822 posts crawled from the official Sina Weibo accounts of 104 Chinese health commissions in prefecture-level cities during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results show that Chinese local government agencies have great variations in their DCGSM during the pandemic and the overall performance is poor. Furthermore, Chinese local governments prefer to conserve visitors and generate return visits, rather than dialogic loops development and the usefulness of information enhancement. The findings suggest that both public pressure and peer pressure contribute to the DCGSM of Chinese local governments during the public health crisis. In addition, the effect of public pressure is stronger than that of the peer pressure, indicating that local government agencies have experienced more demand-pull DCGSM.

How to Promote Public Engagement and Enhance Sentiment Through Government Social Media During the COVID-19 Crisis: A Public Value Management Perspective

In the period of public health crisis, effective and efficient transmission of crisis information to the public through social media is an important support for achieving social stability and orderly online public engagement. From the perspective of public value management, this study systematically investigated how local government agencies in China used social media to promote public engagement and raise public sentiment during the COVID-19 crisis. Using data captured from the “Wuhan Release” Sina Weibo account, the authors studied the factors that influence public engagement, including information sources, language styles, and media types. Further, it explores the influence of the interactive effects of public value with information sources, language styles, and media types on public engagement and public sentiment. The results show that the consistency of government response content and public value promotes public engagement and raises public sentiment. This research provides enlightenment and ideas for cognition, understanding and governance of public opinion in practice.

Does Citizen Engagement With Government Social Media Accounts Differ During the Different Stages of Public Health Crises? An Empirical Examination of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has created one of the greatest challenges to humankind, developing long-lasting socio-economic impacts on our health and wellbeing, employment, and global economy. Citizen engagement with government social media accounts has proven crucial for the effective communication and management of public health crisis. Although much research has explored the societal impact of the pandemic, extant literature has failed to create a systematic and dynamic model that examines the formation mechanism of citizen engagement with government social media accounts at the different stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study fills this gap by employing the Heuristic-Systematic Model and investigating the effects of the heuristic clues including social media capital, information richness, language features, dialogic loop, and the systematic clue including content types, on citizen engagement with government social media across three different stages of the pandemic, employing the moderating role of emotional valence. Methods: The proposed model is validated by scraping 16,710 posts from 22 provincial and municipal government micro-blog accounts in the Hubei province, China. Results: Results show that the positive effects of social media capital on citizen engagement were observed at all stages. However, the effects of information richness, language features, dialogic loop, and content types, and the moderating effect of emotional valence, varied across the different pandemic development stages. Conclusions: The findings provide suggestions for the further effective use of government social media, and better cope with crises. Government agencies should pay attention to the content and form of information shared, using technical means to analyze the information needs of citizens at different stages of public health emergencies, understanding the content most concerned by citizens, and formulating the content type of posts.

Investigating information dissemination and citizen engagement through government social media during the COVID-19 crisis

Purpose - This study explores how effectively the Indian government utilized social media to communicate emergency information and promote citizen engagement and awareness during the first wave of COVID-19 crisis. Design/methodology/approach - This research investigates the tweets scraped from the official Twitter handle "CovidnewsbyMlB" of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Government of India;the authors unearthed patterns in the communications between the government and its citizens by adopting various social media analysis techniques. Further, the authors also tried to examine the influence of media richness and dialogic loop on citizen engagement through government social media (CEGSM) using multivariate analysis method. Findings - The results highlighted clusters of words/terms present in the tweets related to COVID-19 combating strategies, guidelines, and updates. The authors also found that media richness has a significant positive relationship with CEGSM, but dialogic loop has an insignificant relationship with CEGSM. Originality/value - This study provides suggestions to government agencies about ways to improve CEGSM by enhancing media richness and dialogic loop elements such as surveys, polls, and responses in the crisis communication.

The Relationship between Government Information Supply and Public Information Demand in the Early Stage of COVID-19 in China-An Empirical Analysis.

Accurate and effective government communication is essential for public health emergencies. To optimize the effectiveness of government crisis communication, this paper puts forward an analytical perspective of supply-demand matching based on the interaction between the government and the public. We investigate the stage characteristics and the topic evolutions of both government information supply and public information demand through combined statistical analysis, text mining, text coding and cluster analysis, using empirical data from the National Health Commission's WeChat in China. A quantitative measure reflecting the public demand for government information supply is proposed. Result indicates that the government has provided a large amount of high-intensity epidemic-related information, with six major topics being the medical team, government actions, scientific protection knowledge, epidemic situation, high-level deployment and global cooperation. The public's greatest information needs present different characteristics at different stages, with "scientific protection knowledge", "government actions" and "medical teams" being the most needed in the outbreak stage, the control stage and the stable stage, respectively. The subject of oversupply is "medical team", and the subject of short supply is "epidemic dynamics" and "science knowledge". This paper provides important theoretical and practical value for improving the effectiveness of government communication in public health crises.

Why Do Citizens Share COVID-19 Fact-Checks Posted by Chinese Government Social Media Accounts? The Elaboration Likelihood Model.

Widespread misinformation about COVID-19 poses a significant threat to citizens long-term health and the combating of the disease. To fight the spread of misinformation, Chinese governments have used official social media accounts to participate in fact-checking activities. This study aims to investigate why citizens share fact-checks about COVID-19 and how to promote this activity. Based on the elaboration likelihood model, we explore the effects of peripheral cues (social media capital, social media strategy, media richness, and source credibility) and central cues (content theme and content importance) on the number of shares of fact-checks posted by official Chinese Government social media accounts. In total, 820 COVID-19 fact-checks from 413 Chinese Government Sina Weibo accounts were obtained and evaluated. Results show that both peripheral and central cues play important roles in the sharing of fact-checks. For peripheral cues, social media capital and media richness significantly promote the number of shares. Compared with the push strategy, both the pull strategy and networking strategy facilitate greater fact-check sharing. Fact-checks posted by Central Government social media accounts receive more shares than local government accounts. For central cues, content importance positively predicts the number of shares. In comparison to fact-checks about the latest COVID-19 news, government actions received fewer shares, while social conditions received more shares.

Factors Driving Citizen Engagement With Government TikTok Accounts During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Model Development and Analysis.

BACKGROUND: During the COVID-19 pandemic, growth in citizen engagement with social media platforms has enabled public health departments to accelerate and improve health information dissemination, developing transparency and trust between governments and citizens. In light of these benefits, it is imperative to learn the antecedents and underlying mechanisms for this to maintain and enhance engagement. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to determine the factors and influencing mechanisms related to citizen engagement with the TikTok account of the National Health Commission of China during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Using a web crawler, 355 short videos were collected from the Healthy China account on TikTok (with more than 3 million followers throughout China), covering the period from January 21, 2020, to April 25, 2020. The title and video length, as well as the number of likes, shares, and comments were collected for each video. After classifying them using content analysis, a series of negative binomial regression analyses were completed. RESULTS: Among the 355 videos, 154 (43.4%) related to guidance for clinicians, patients, and ordinary citizens, followed by information concerning the government's handling of the pandemic (n=100, 28.2%), the latest news about COVID-19 (n=61, 17.2%), and appreciation toward frontline emergency services (n=40, 11.3%). Video length, titles, dialogic loop, and content type all influenced the level of citizen engagement. Specifically, video length was negatively associated with the number of likes (incidence rate ratio [IRR]=0.19, P<.001) and comments (IRR=0.39, P<.001). Title length was positively related to the number of shares (IRR=24.25, P=.01), likes (IRR=8.50, P=.03), and comments (IRR=7.85, P=.02). Dialogic loop negatively predicted the number of shares (IRR=0.56, P=.03). In comparison to appreciative information, information about the government's handling of the situation (IRR=5.16, P<.001) and guidelines information (IRR=7.31, P<.001) were positively correlated with the number of shares, while the latest news was negatively related to the number of likes received (IRR=0.46, P=.004). More importantly, the relationship between predictors and citizen engagement was moderated by the emotional valence of video titles. Longer videos with positive titles received a higher number of likes (IRR=21.72, P=.04) and comments (IRR=10.14, P=.047). Furthermore, for short videos related to government handling of the pandemic (IRR=14.48, P=.04) and guidance for stakeholders (IRR=7.59, P=.04), positive titles received a greater number of shares. Videos related to the latest news (IRR=66.69, P=.04) received more likes if the video title displayed higher levels of positive emotion. CONCLUSIONS: During the COVID-19 pandemic, videos were frequently published on government social media platforms. Video length, title, dialogic loop, and content type significantly influenced the level of citizen engagement. These relationships were moderated by the emotional valence of the video's title. Our findings have implications for maintaining and enhancing citizen engagement via government social media.

Does government social media promote users' information security behavior towards COVID-19 scams? Cultivation effects and protective motivations.

Cybercriminals are taking advantage of the COVID-19 outbreak and offering COVID-19-related scams to unsuspecting people. Currently, there is a lack of studies that focus on protecting people from COVID-19-related cybercrimes. Drawing upon Cultivation Theory and Protection Motivation Theory, we develop a research model to examine the cultivation effect of government social media on peoples' information security behavior towards COVID-19 scams. We employ structural equation modeling to analyze 240 survey responses collected from social media followers of government accounts. Our results suggest that government social media account followers' participation influences their information security behavior through perceived severity, perceived vulnerability, self-efficacy, and response efficacy. Our study highlights the importance of government social media for information security management during crises.

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

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.