Abstract
Scientific and moderate exercise is an effective remedy to boost the immune system and minimize the risk of infection in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic period. In this context, social media platforms play an essential role in communicating scientific fitness at home. Based on the integrated analysis of communication, physical geography, and health geography, this article takes short fitness-based videos on TikTok as the research object and comprehensively uses text analysis, mathematical statistics, and spatial analysis to reveal the characteristics of communication elements, fitness preferences, and the spatiotemporal evolution of these short videos, and to explore the communication mechanism and optimization path of short videos. The results show that: (1) the communication information focusing on “fighting against the epidemic and keeping fit at home” is made into short videos by female youth. Through the communication channels mainly composed of texts, pictures, and audio, the communication subjects carry out multilevel interactive communication with the communication objects; (2) fitness preferences are mainly composed of dances, unarmed fitness, and fitness with equipment; (3) from the perspective of time, taking February 20 as the node, the daily number of released short videos shows a trend of “increase before decrease”; from the perspective of space, the distribution is significantly unbalanced across provinces, and the direction is not apparent; and (4) this article explores the communication mechanism and targeted optimization countermeasures of short fitness-based videos on TikTok in China's COVID-19 epidemic period.
Highlights
Since its outbreak at the end of 2019, the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has rapidly spread worldwide, which is a great threat to human safety, national harmony, and stability
The main content of information dissemination is fighting against the epidemic, keeping fit at home, and strengthening immunity
The disseminator and recipient carry out the multilevel interactive dissemination through the TikTok platform
Summary
Since its outbreak at the end of 2019, the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has rapidly spread worldwide, which is a great threat to human safety, national harmony, and stability. Exercise with moderate intensity can improve human immunity (Neil, 2018) and reduce the risk of upper respiratory tract infection (Malm, 2006). Some scientific fitness behaviors can reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection (Ranasinghe, 2020). “Scientific fitness” refers to the use of healthy, scientific exercise methods to promote physical health, such as which exercise method is correct, which is suitable for oneself, and how long an exercise is appropriate. Dating back to January 30, 2020, the general office of the State General Administration of Sports issued A Notice on Vigorously Promoting the Scientific Fitness Methods at Home, which advocates bodybuilding at home and sets off an upsurge of home exercise nationwide. How to exercise at home and advocate exercising at home are problems that need to be solved
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