Engagement of Government Social Media on Facebook during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Macao.

Patrick Cheong-Iao Pang,Kin Sun Chan,Qixin Cai,Wenjing Jiang

doi:10.3390/ijerph18073508

Abstract

Government social media is widely used for providing updates to and engaging with the public in the COVID-19 pandemic. While Facebook is one of the popular social media used by governments, there is only a scant of research on this platform. This paper aims to understand how government social media should be used and how its engagement changes in prodromal, acute and chronic stages of the pandemic. We collected 1664 posts and 10,805 comments from the Facebook pages of the Macao government from 1 January to 31 October 2020. Using word frequency and content analysis, the results suggest that the engagement was relatively low at the beginning and then surged in the acute stage, with a decreasing trend in the chronic stage. Information about public health measures maintained their engagement in all stages, whereas the engagement of other information was dropping over time. Government social media can be used for increasing vigilance and awareness in the prodromal stage; disseminating information and increasing transparency in the acute stage; and focusing on mental health support and recovery policies in the chronic stage. Additionally, it can be a tool for controlling rumors, providing regular updates and fostering community cohesion in public health crises.

Highlights

After the establishment of the COVID-19 Coordination Center and its dedicated page, information related to COVID-19 was posted on this specific page and only the posts on this page were included in our research
In response to RQ1, we identified that the engagement on the government social media was lower at the beginning, peaked at the acute stage in which the disease was widely transmitted
We studied how government social media could engage with the public using the lens of the staged crisis management model and examined how government social media was used in the COVID-19 pandemic

Summary

Introduction

Our study aims to conceptualize the use of government social media in this COVID-19 crisis for its effective use in future public health crises. The emergency and crisis management system in Macao originated in the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003 [25]. This system and key legislations such as the Law on Prevention, Control and Treatment of Infectious Diseases and the. Before COVID-19, the crisis management system was primarily used for natural disasters such as typhoons Hato (2017) and Mangkhut (2018) [25] In this current outbreak, the system and the legislation enables the government to realize public health measures and isolate potentially infectious patients [24]. The government established a 24-h COVID-19 Coordination Center for monitoring the development of the potential infections on 21 January [24]

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Conclusion