Abstract

BackgroundThe coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic presents one of the most challenging global crises at the dawn of a new decade. Public health authorities (PHAs) are increasingly adopting the use of social media such as Facebook to rapidly communicate and disseminate pandemic response measures to the public. Understanding of communication strategies across different PHAs and examining the public response on the social media landscapes can help improve practices for disseminating information to the public.ObjectiveThis study aims to examine COVID-19-related outreach efforts of PHAs in Singapore, the United States, and England, and the corresponding public response to these outreach efforts on Facebook.MethodsPosts and comments from the Facebook pages of the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Singapore, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States, and Public Health England (PHE) in England were extracted from January 1, 2019, to March 18, 2020. Posts published before January 1, 2020, were categorized as pre-COVID-19, while the remaining posts were categorized as peri-COVID-19 posts. COVID-19-related posts were identified and classified into themes. Metrics used for measuring outreach and engagement were frequency, mean posts per day (PPD), mean reactions per post, mean shares per post, and mean comments per post. Responses to the COVID-19 posts were measured using frequency, mean sentiment polarity, positive to negative sentiments ratio (PNSR), and positive to negative emotions ratio (PNER). Toxicity in comments were identified and analyzed using frequency, mean likes per toxic comment, and mean replies per toxic comment. Trend analysis was performed to examine how the metrics varied with key events such as when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic.ResultsThe MOH published more COVID-19 posts (n=271; mean PPD 5.0) compared to the CDC (n=94; mean PPD 2.2) and PHE (n=45; mean PPD 1.4). The mean number of comments per COVID-19 post was highest for the CDC (mean CPP 255.3) compared to the MOH (mean CPP 15.6) and PHE (mean CPP 12.5). Six major themes were identified, with posts about prevention and safety measures and situation updates being prevalent across the three PHAs. The themes of the MOH’s posts were diverse, while the CDC and PHE posts focused on a few themes. Overall, response sentiments for the MOH posts (PNSR 0.94) were more favorable compared to response sentiments for the CDC (PNSR 0.57) and PHE (PNSR 0.55) posts. Toxic comments were rare (0.01%) across all PHAs.ConclusionsPHAs’ extent of Facebook use for outreach purposes during the COVID-19 pandemic varied among the three PHAs, highlighting the strategies and approaches that other PHAs can potentially adopt. Our study showed that social media analysis was capable of providing insights about the communication strategies of PHAs during disease outbreaks.

Highlights

  • BackgroundThe coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was first identified in Wuhan, China in December 2019

  • COVID-19 Outreach Efforts of Public health authorities (PHAs) and Public Engagement In Table 1 and 2, the aggregated statistics related to the Facebook posts from the Ministry of Health (MOH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Public Health England (PHE) are listed along with the public engagement metrics

  • In the pre-COVID-19 phase (January 1, 2019, to December 31, 2019), the CDC had an average of 2 daily posts, while the MOH and PHE had an average of 1 daily post (Table 1)

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Summary

Introduction

BackgroundThe coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was first identified in Wuhan, China in December 2019. It has since spread to 210 countries and territories, infecting 1,697,356 people and causing 102,667 deaths as of April 11, 2020 [1]. Most countries started reporting infections by the second half of January 2020. In an effort to contain the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore, multiple interventions have been implemented on both societal and health care system levels [6], and the country shifted rapidly to Disease Outbreak Response System Condition (DORSCON) orange, the second-highest level of alert for disease outbreaks in Singapore, on February 7, 2020 [7], just 15 days after the first case of COVID-19 infection was confirmed. Public health authorities (PHAs) are increasingly adopting the use of social media such as Facebook to rapidly communicate and disseminate pandemic response measures to the public. Understanding of communication strategies across different PHAs and examining the public response on the social media landscapes can help improve practices for disseminating information to the public

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