Crisis communication on social media: A comparative study of COVID-19 tweets by four international public health organizations and four news media organizations and the public responses to the tweets (Preprint)
Authors: Song Ting , Ke Jiang , Yu Haiyan , Yecies Brian , Yu Ping 
Published: May 2023

BACKGROUND

Social media platforms are crucial for public health and news media organizations in crisis communication with the public, as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, limited research on how these organizations use social media for communication may inhibit their public relations and community engagement in managing future crises.

OBJECTIVE

This study investigates early COVID-19 communication by four public health organizations and four news media organizations on Twitter and the public responses to these tweets.

METHODS

A mixed qualitative and quantitative data analysis was conducted. An unsupervised learning approach based on a convolutional neural network was used to classify the 15,711 tweets crawled from Twitter according to their meaning. The top 30 tweets in the validated 37 clusters were subjected to in-depth thematic analysis. Public responses to different content and communication strategies were then compared using descriptive statistics.

RESULTS

Six topics were identified: (1) case updates, (2) medical research and treatment information, (3) health instructions and suggestions, (4) impacts and consequences, (5) policies, methods and action, and (6) opinions and responses. Public health organizations tweeted most about "health instructions and suggestions" (52.6%) and least about "impacts and consequences" (2.7%). News media organizations tweeted most about "policies, methods and action" (28.1%) and least about "health instructions and suggestions" (3.6%). Public health organizations’ tweets about "medical research and treatment information" attracted the highest replies/tweet (24.4%), retweets/tweet (27.2%), and likes/tweet (27%). News media organizations’ tweets about "opinions and responses" attracted the highest replies/tweet (33.5%) and likes/tweet (23%) and "medical research and treatment information" attracted the highest retweets/tweet (21%). Both types of organizations received the fewest replies/tweet (10.6% vs 6.7%), retweets/tweet (9.4% vs 8.6%), and likes/tweet (8.8% vs 8.8%) about "impacts and consequences". The public was receptive "opinions and responses" for likes and replies for and "health instructions and suggestions" for retweets. They responded much less to "impacts and consequences" and "policies, methods and action". Five communication phases were identified: inception, awareness, panic, spreading, and co-habitant. For communication strategies, more hashtags used led to fewer public responses in the format of replies, retweets, and likes. Longer tweet text led to fewer retweets but no significant effect on replies or likes. An exception is that longer tweet text resulted in more retweets and likes about "medical research and treatment information", and more replies, retweets, and likes about "health instructions and suggestions".

CONCLUSIONS

Facing a public health crisis like COVID-19, the public engages more with social media content about pandemic updates and health instructions. To improve communication, more concise language and fewer hashtags may be used in when reporting factual pandemic information. Conversely, incorporating comprehensive details and a higher frequency of hashtags may be advantageous when providing health instructions.