Abstract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been closely tied with what has been called an infodemic, a “second disease” that occurs when massive information volumes (particularly with a high prevalence of false information) hinder the public health response. In this context, social listening, the process of monitoring and analyzing conversations to inform strategic activities both online and offline, becomes an even more essential component of risk communication and engagement strategies. In the Eastern and Southern Africa region, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and partners in the response have activated their capacity to gather insights on the information needs of the populations served to better inform and engage with local communities. We describe the social listening approach taken at the Eastern and Southern Africa regional level to respond to COVID-19 and highlight efforts by the Comoros, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, and Zambia UNICEF country offices to implement digital and nondigital social listening to inform risk communication and community engagement. The analysis highlights channels leveraged, types of data monitored, and provides examples of social listening data use, as well as early challenges and lessons learned.
Highlights
Children’s lives have been highly, and often silently, affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, risk communication is the real-time exchange of information, opinions, and advice between response teams and families who are faced with the pandemic threat,[6] and community engagement is a mutual partnership between responders and communities in affected areas, whereby local stakeholders have ownership in controlling the spread of the outbreak.[7]
Risk communication and community engagement (RCCE) on COVID-19, developed in June 2020 by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO), aimed to contribute to 3 objectives related to the COVID-19 RCCE: (1) mitigate potential effects of misinformation on adoption of recommended behaviors, demand, and uptake of services by implementing a system to track, analyze, and manage COVID-19-related rumors at the regional level; (2) inform the design and implementation of high-quality digital communication for content that meets information needs and responds to concerns and rumors shared by different audiences; and (3) reinforce country-level capacity in rumor tracking and management by providing guidance to country offices on social media monitoring activities applied to the COVID-19 response
Summary
Children’s lives have been highly, and often silently, affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Since the early stages of the pandemic, Eastern and Southern Africa region RCCE activities—collaboratively carried out by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), World Health Organization (WHO), and RCCE partners—have been informed by the collection and review of social data. These social data are gathered through a variety of channels including interactive radio, hotlines, short message service (SMS) messages, faceto-face social mobilization, community meetings, social media, messaging apps, and chat bots. The UNICEF country office examples show how elements of digital and offline social listening built collaboratively by partners blend together to inform RCCE activities at the national level
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