The moderating effects of entertainers on public engagement through government activities in social media during the COVID-19

Can social media promote vaccination? Strategies and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccine popularization on Chinese Weibo

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown a high severity in terms of mortality, and to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, a great deal of reliance has been placed on vaccines with defensive effects. In the context of the transmission of hazardous Omicron variant strains, vaccine popularization and acceptance are very important to ensure world health security. Social media can spread information and increase public confidence in and acceptance of vaccines.

Method

In this study, weibos related to "vaccine science popularization" during the COVID-19 pandemic in China were collected, and Weibo publishers were divided into Individuals, Organizations, Media, Government, and Scientists. The communication strategies were analyzed with content analysis from the four dimensions of Issue, Topic, Frame, and Position. SnowNLP was used to mine the audience comments and to assess their emotional tendencies. Finally, hierarchical regression was used to verify the causal relationship between vaccine science popularization strategies and audiences' emotions.

Results

We found that the higher the scientific authority of the weibo publisher, the more positive the emotional tendency of the audience toward the weibo. Issues that are scientific, authoritative, and positive topics that positively present the advantages of the COVID-19 vaccine, and frames with detailed narratives, scientific arguments, diversified forms of presentations, and positions in support of the COVID-19 vaccine, positively affect the effect of vaccine popularization.

Discussion

Based on the experience of COVID-19 vaccine promotion in China, the results may serve as a reference for promoting innovative vaccines and handling public health affairs around the world.

Impact of social media news on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and vaccination behavior

In order to take advantage of the power of social media to promote vaccination, this study reveals the mechanisms of positive and negative impacts of social media news on vaccine hesitancy and vaccination behavior. Based on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework, we developed a research model to understand the effects of vaccine safety news and risk news from social media (external stimuli) on individuals' psychological organism (i.e., safety perception and risk perception) and consequent behavioral response, vaccine hesitancy and vaccination behavior. The proposed model was tested by partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) on a sample gathered in China from September 2021 to November 2021 and from February 2022 to April 2022 (valid responses = 1579). The results found that the relationship between vaccine risk news from social media and risk perception was higher than the relationship between vaccine safety news from social media and safety perception. Individuals are more sensitive to vaccine risk news than safety news on social media. Moreover, both safety perception and risk perception explained the critical psychological mechanisms behind vaccine hesitancy. Interestingly, ego network density mitigated the effect of safety news on safety perception and the effect of risk news on risk perception. The findings contribute to the S-O-R model, the research on social media effects, and the literature on vaccination attitudes and behaviors. This study also informs public health officials about leveraging the power of social media to motivate the public to accept the COVID-19 vaccines.

Cyber violence caused by the disclosure of route information during the COVID-19 pandemic

Disclosure of patients' travel route information by government departments has been an effective and indispensable pandemic prevention and control measure during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this measure may make patients susceptible to cyber violence (CV). We selected 13 real cases that occurred in China during the COVID-19 pandemic for analysis. We identified several characteristics that commonly appeared due to route information, such as rumors about and moral condemnation of patients, and determined that patients who are the first locally confirmed cases of a particular wave of the pandemic are more likely to be the victims of CV. We then analyzed and compared six real cases using data mining and network analysis approaches. We found that disclosing travel route information increases the risk of exposing patients to CV, especially those who violate infection prevention regulations. In terms of disseminating information, we found that mainstream media and influential we-media play an essential role. Based on the findings, we summarized the formation mechanism of route information disclosure-caused CV and proposed three practical suggestions-namely, promote the publicity of the media field with the help of mainstream media and influential we-media, optimize the route information collection and disclosure system, and ease public anxiety about the COVID-19 pandemic. To our knowledge, this study is one of the first to focus on CV on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. We believe that our findings can help governments better carry out pandemic prevention and control measures on a global scale.