Abstract
While social media has been increasingly used for communication of infectious disease outbreaks, little is known about how social media can improve strategic communication across various stages of the health crisis. The Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication Model (Reynolds & Seeger, 2005; CERC) outlines strategies across different crisis phases and can guide crisis communication on social media. This research therefore investigates how social media can be utilized to implement and adapt the CERC model, by examining the strategic uses of Facebook in communicating the recent Zika epidemic by health authorities in Singapore. Zika-related Facebook posts of three main Singapore health agencies published within the one year period from January 2016 to December 2016 were thematically analysed. Results suggest that Facebook was used to communicate the crisis strategically, which supported and added to the CERC model. Novel uses of Facebook for outbreak communication were demonstrated, including promoting public common responsibility for disease prevention and expressing regards to the public for cooperation. Results also suggested that preparedness messages might be the most effective, as they produced a great level of public engagement. The adaptability of the CERC model in social media contexts to improve crisis communication is discussed.
Highlights
With the proliferation of the Internet and mobile phones, social media is playing an ever-increasing role in crisis communication during infectious disease outbreaks
To understand how Zika was strategically communicated by the government across various stages of the epidemic, an in-depth content analysis was conducted on Facebook posts for the three key government agencies, namely National Environment Agency (NEA), Ministry of Health (MOH), and Health Promotion Board (HPB)
As agencies are increasingly social media platforms totheir communicate communication. This demonstrates an existing early attempt by health authorities deploytosocial media disease outbreak, it study is important to adapt models in a social media to context guide their as a tool for strategic outbreak
Summary
With the proliferation of the Internet and mobile phones, social media is playing an ever-increasing role in crisis communication during infectious disease outbreaks. Due to its conversional and transparent characteristics, social media allows for health authorities to post real-time information as a crisis unfolds, as well as quickly reach a large number of people at a low cost [1,2]. As social media allows two-way communications between health authorities and the public, health authorities can quickly address public concerns and reduce public panic during the crisis [3]. Social media could likely improve strategic communication by linking the public with real-time updates of the crisis and information on how the health organizations are functioning. Little is known about how social media can improve strategic outbreak communication
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