Abstract
Effective communication and coordination between government agencies and the general public are important to manage disaster risks and mitigate the risks involved to the public. The main objectives of developing awareness, sending information to the public on time and facilitating swift community responses can be achieved by adopting social media platforms blended with existing communication mechanisms. At present, many government agencies and government officials use social media platforms as one of the leading information dissemination mechanisms. This study was conducted by means of a case study, considering the information dissemination through official Facebook pages maintained by health authorities during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Sri Lanka. Primary data were collected through the “Health Promotion Bureau” (HPB) Facebook page, the official page dedicated to sharing health-related information with the community. The social network analysis considered changes in the content at the different stages of the pandemic, languages and the different interfaces used to disseminate information. The number of shares was regarded as active participation, which implies the engagements of followers. Two interaction networks were developed to identify the trends and patterns in information dissemination via social media. Further, this study focussed on the influence of pandemic situations on the HPB page followers’ interaction through statistical analysis. Derived interaction networks for different languages showed that posts related to pandemic behaviour and COVID-19 symptoms, etc., have low centrality value. Similarly, the interface interaction network revealed that HPB had used a standard method of reporting particular information like situational updates of COVID-19 in terms of interface. Statistical analysis on the number of shares for different interfaces revealed that the posts with text and image have a higher possibility of sharing by a Facebook user. Quantitative analysis shows that users are sensitive to daily COVID-19 positive cases, although the initial interaction for the HPB's page was reduced. Users tend to share the daily COVID-19 report posted by the page whenever a cluster was identified, as it leads to an increment in the rate of reporting infected cases.
Published Version
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