Public Social Media Research Articles

The Impact of Stimulating Community Participation on the Development of Physical Education Activities in Educational Institutions

The study aimed to identify the impact of stimulating community participation on the development of sports activities in educational institutions. In addition, it sought to provide educational leaders, those in charge of sports activities programs in schools, and the Saudi Ministry of Education with sufficient information to benefit the ideas and resources of community participation in student's development generally and in physical education especially. We use the descriptive analytical approach to answer the research questions. The study sample consisted of school principals, parents, institutions and sports clubs representatives in Al-Ahsa Governorate, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The results of the study showed that there is an insufficiency of sport activities in the educational institutions and the targets of the ministry plans may not be achieved. Results also showed, despite the importance of the role of community participation in the educational development through many shreds of research evidence in previous studies, there is a weakness in the application of community participation in Saudi Arabia environment. Moreover, there are no plans involving community participation to improve and develop physical education activities in schools. In the light of these results, the main implications of the study were: 1. Developing plans and ways of cooperation between the schools, institutions, sports clubs and the concerned authorities to activate community participation and provide financial and physical support to sports activities; 2. School principals have a greater role in promoting and activating community participation through public communication and social media; 3. Activating the role of the parent's council committee to be involved and understanding the problems and obstacles that the school suffers from, and how to find out ways to improve the sports activities.

Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Molar-Incisor Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Molar-Incisor Hypomineralisation among a Group of Egyptian Dentists Hypomineralisation among a Group of Egyptian Dentists (Observational Cross-Sectional Study) (Observational Cross-Sectional Study)

Introduction: Molar Incisor Hypomineralisation (MIH) is one of qualitative DED. MIH is increasing dramatically in the new generations, which is considered to be challenging for the majority of dentists. MIH was found to be prevalent in 14.2% of the world's population, with the high incidence 18% in South America and the least (10.9%) in Africa. This study was carried out to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practice of graduated Egyptian dentists' group regarding MIH condition and compare the outcome information among different dental specialists. Material and methods: A google based questionnaire based on previously validated published papers distributed electronically through different social media by direct message or public social media link. Eligibility criteria including Graduated Egyptian licensed dentists excluding students, interns and other medical specialties. Model answer prepared by researchers in 3 rounds based on most recent published papers. Results: 416 participants enrolled in this study with response rate reach to 16.7% for direct message and 1.4% for public share link. 79.1% of PDs, 45.8% of GPs and 45.0% of other specialties are familiar with both MIH condition and terminology. A prevalence of 10-20 % was notice by participants during their practice (21.9% PDs, 22.0% GPs and 22.2 other specialties). Most of participants believe that there is a lack of information regarding MIH between Egyptian dentists. The majority of the participant used Full coverage for posterior teeth and composite resin for anterior teeth as treatment choice. 53.1% of PDs are encountered MIH in monthly bases. Conclusion: MIH is a clinical problem that Egyptian dentists well recognize and frequently encounter in clinical practice. There is a need to include MIH in academic curriculum to increase the awareness regarding the condition and clinical management.

Analyzing Public Concerns Over COVID-19 Variants Using Social Media

SARS-CoV-2, or more popularly known COVID-19 has claimed more than 5.5 million lives since it has been declared as a global pandemic. Similar to other viruses, COVID-19 is also undergoing several mutations and has many variants like Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Omicron and others. With so many variants, social media users are confused and posting their frustrations and angers with Tweets or Posts in public social media platforms. These publicly accessible social media posts provide a wealth of information for a social scientist or political leader or a strategic decision maker. This study demonstrates a feasible approach to extract meaningful critical information from social media posts. By programmatically accessing Twitter database from 11th January 2022 till 20th January 2022, we retrieved almost 9 K Tweet messages on 6 different keywords like “COVID Variants”, “Omicron”, “Alpha Variant”, “Beta Variant”, “Gamma Variant” and “Delta Variant”. Results were compared against metrics like users, posts, engagement, and influence. Omicron was found to be the most popular topic compared to other variants with an influence score of 70.2 million and 2.1 K posts during the monitored period. The most popular sources for influences on COVID-19 Variant related posts were found to be @reuters with 24.2M, @forbes with 17.4M, @timesofindia with 14.2M and @inquirerdotnet with 3.4 followers. This study also found out that the most popular Tweet languages were English followed by French and Dutch. Lastly, this study ranked user mentions, word frequency (with word cloud) and hashtags for COVID-19 Variant related twitter posts during the monitored timeframe.

Public Social Media Discussions on Agricultural Product Safety Incidents: Chinese African Swine Fever Debate on Weibo.

Public concern over major agricultural product safety incidents, such as swine flu and avian flu, can intensify financial losses in the livestock and poultry industries. Crawler technology were applied to reviewed the Weibo social media discussions on the African Swine Fever (ASF) incident in China that was reported on 3 August 2018, and used content analysis and network analysis to specifically examine the online public opinion network dissemination characteristics of verified individual users, institutional users and ordinary users. It was found that: (1) attention paid to topics related to “epidemic,” “treatment,” “effect” and “prevent” decrease in turn, with the interest in “prevent” increasing significantly when human infections were possible; (2) verified individual users were most concerned about epidemic prevention and control and play a supervisory role, the greatest concern of institutional users and ordinary users were issues related to agricultural industry and agricultural products price fluctuations respectively; (3) among institutional users, media was the main opinion leader, and among non-institutional users, elites from all walks of life, especially the food safety personnel acted as opinion leaders. Based on these findings, some policy suggestions are given: determine the nature of the risk to human health of the safety incident, stabilizing prices of relevant agricultural products, and giving play to the role of information dissemination of relevant institutions.

Information experiences of organisational newcomers: using public social media for organisational socialisation

ABSTRACT Although much has been done to understand employee social media uses, our knowledge of how public social media affect information experiences during organisational socialisation is limited. Filling this gap, this study explores organisational newcomers’ use of WeChat, the most popular public social media in China. Findings from interviews with organisational newcomers who primarily use WeChat for work suggest that they find useful official and unofficial information from their companies’ WeChat public accounts, WeChat workgroups, and their coworkers’ posts. Affordances of social media, such as persistence of information and visibility of content, enable distinctive experiences of information receiving and seeking for newcomers. Organisational newcomers obtain information that is otherwise not available in offline settings and seek information in unique ways, such as extracting information from chat histories. Observing conversations in WeChat groups and reading their coworkers’ posts enables ambient awareness of their coworkers and companies, which facilitates organisational identification. Despite the information benefits, the participants also perceived paradoxes in their experience, struggling with whether they should always keep an eye on information from WeChat, being overwhelmed by too much irrelevant information, and being uncertain about which information strategies were appropriate. Implications of this study on research and practice are discussed.

New Public Diplomacy, Social Media and Non-State Actors

Siyaset bilimi ve uluslararası ilişkiler alanındaki tartışmaların bir bölümü, bireylerin ve devlet dışı aktörlerin, kamu diplomasisini hangi yollarla ve ne kadar etkilediği noktasında yoğunlaşmaktadır. Bilgi ve iletişim teknolojilerinde yaşanan büyük ve hızlı değişim ve sivil toplumun rolünün giderek artması sonucu, yeni kamu diplomasisi, devlet dışı aktörleri daha fazla içerir hale gelmiştir. Bununla birlikte, kamu diplomasisi alanındaki perspektifler arasındaki farklılıklar nedeniyle, devlet dışı aktörlerin alandaki yerlerinin tam olarak tanımlanması mümkün olamamıştır. Bu çalışma, literatürde söz konusu olan bu belirsizliğe dikkat çekerek, sosyal medyanın kullanımıyla yeni kamu diplomasisinde devlet dışı aktörlerin, özellikle bireylerin aktör rolü üstlenmelerini incelemektedir. Bu çerçevede literatür taraması ve nitel araştırma yöntemi uygulanmıştır. Makalenin ilk bölümünde yeni kamu diplomasisi anlayışında yaşanan değişim ve dönüşüm ile özellikle sosyal medyanın etkisi üzerinde durulmuştur. İkinci bölümde ise; yeni kamu diplomasisinde devlet dışı aktörlerin varlığı, zaman içerisinde değişen ve artan rollerinin önemine dikkat çekilmiştir. Sonuç olarak çalışma, farklı perspektiflerin ortak bir görüşte birleştirilmesi halinde, yeni kamu diplomasisinin hem daha anlaşılır hem de daha doğru işler duruma geleceğini, aksi takdirde -devlet dışı aktörlerin kamu diplomasisi içerisindeki konumu hususundaki belirsizliğin sürmesi durumunda- “yeni bir akademik alanın doğuşunun” mümkün olamayacağını iddia etmektedir.

Perceived Susceptibility and Severity of COVID-19 on Prevention Practices, Early in the Pandemic in the State of Florida.

Early in the pandemic and prior to the development of the COVID-19 vaccine, prevention measures were promoted to help inhibit the spread of the virus. To optimize adherence to prevention practices, it’s important to understand factors that may influence adherence. A study was conducted in the month of April, 2020, to explore the influence of perceptions of COVID-19 on prevention practices. The sample included members of a public social-media group focused on providing updates and information on COVID-19. A total of 719 individuals completed an online survey that assessed various aspects of COVID-19 which included experience, perceptions, and prevention practices. The perceptions of COVID-19 included perceived susceptibility of contracting the virus, and perceived potential severity if contracted COVID-19. To assess prevention practices, the survey included a 10-item prevention practices questionnaire that included items such as wearing a mask, and social distancing. Results revealed that perceived susceptibility of contracting COVID-19, and potential severity of COVID-19 were significant in predicting prevention practices. Further, results suggest that perceived potential severity predicts a greater proportion of the variance in prevention practices than susceptibility of contracting COVID-19. In addition, a moderation analysis revealed no interaction between perceived susceptibility and severity, which provides evidence that the variables do not influence one another. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The association between social media use and hesitancy toward COVID-19 vaccine booster shots in China: A web-based cross-sectional survey

ABSTRACT COVID-19 vaccine booster shots are necessary to provide durable immunity and stronger protection against the emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. As a major platform for access to information, social media plays an important role in disseminating health information. This study aimed to evaluate hesitancy toward COVID-19 vaccine booster shots in China, assess its association with social media use, and provide information to manage social media. We conducted a cross-sectional study across all 31 provinces in mainland China from November 12, 2021, to November 17, 2021. In total, 3,119 of 3,242 participants completed the questionnaire (response rate = 96.2%). COVID-19 vaccine booster shot hesitancy rate in China was 6.5% (95% CI: 5.6–7.3). Unemployment (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 2.428, 95% CI: 1.590–3.670), low monthly income (aOR 2.854,95% CI: 1.561–5.281), low scores of knowledge (aOR 0.917, 95% CI: 0.869–0.968) and low level of cues to action (aOR 0.773, 95% CI: 0.689–0.869) were associated with vaccine hesitancy. Compared with public social media, lower vaccine hesitancy was associated with high perceived importance of social media (aOR 0.252, 95% CI: 0.146–0.445) and official social media use (aOR 0.671, 95% CI: 0.467–0.954), while higher vaccine hesitancy was associated with traditional media use (aOR 3.718, 95% CI: 1.282–10.273). More efforts are needed to regulate the content of social media and filtering out misinformation. The role of official social media in disseminating health information should be enhanced.

Value Co-Creation on Public Social Media at Different Stages of the New Product Development Process. A Case Study of a Polish Clothes Manufacturer

This study contributes to the value co-creation theory in the context of the new product development process. The aim of this study is a comparison of interactions that lead to creation of value on public social media. The considered interactions are at diff erent stages of the new product development process: an idea generation and product development (crowdsourcing) and post-launch (product off erings). The place where interactions take place is Facebook fan page of a Polish clothes manufacturer. The DART model of value co-creation is the framework of the comparison. The results show that interactions at the stage of ideation and product development phase attracted more attention from the social media users than post-launch ones. Interactions at the stage of idea generation phase encouraged social media users to communicate with other social media users. It was rare with post-launch activities in the form of product off ering. The study is qualitative, based on a case study of a Polish clothes manufacturer with the use of an indepth interview and netnography.

Ungrievable lives and the ensemble of opinions

ABSTRACT Cyclists are understood as vulnerable road users, but when cyclists are killed by drivers, media reports shared to social media are often accompanied by comments that aggressively rearticulate hierarchies of automobility. This article explores the news reporting, public social media sharing, and public social media comments about the deaths of two cyclists – Mike Hall and Cameron Frewer. To assemble an archive of relevant media material, we have developed a method that uses Google News and the Chrome plugin Crowdtangle. We draw on the work of Judith Butler to argue that some commenters find cyclists ungrievable and explore how this performance of ungrievability rearticulates common sense hierarchies of automobility. Similarly, we also argue that these tragic events serve as a locus of sociality for cyclists and cycling advocates who often do not have a personal relation to Hall or Frewer, but nevertheless articulate their mourning in terms of a personalized relationship to their evident tragic vulnerability.

Covid-19 Pandemic Coping Strategies in a Complex Landscape of Crisis Communication: A Participatory Study with Disability Organisations in Sweden

Abstract The article challenges the notion that crisis communication is a matter of outreach of a single message communicated as “one voice” from official channels speaking to the public about how to prepare for and manage crisis situations. The Covid-19 pandemic has made it evident that the general public is accessing multiple channels for crisis information while the crisis situation, the rules and knowledge are constantly changing. An array of different voices, facts, (fake) news and recommendations are channeled via public service, social media, national and international media. Most of this content is accessed and shared via digital channels, but also via communities, workplaces, and between friends and families living in the same country or abroad. This article presents insights gained from a qualitative study addressing disabled people whose everyday lives have always been characterized by extraordinary circumstances, and continuously so also during the Covid-19 pandemic. The aim was to create an understanding of disabled people’s crisis-specific media practices and their ways of coping with situations caused by the pandemic. Through a national online survey study and workshops, it explores how disabled people experience the pandemic, and how crisis information flows affect trust between authorities and the disability movements. The study should be read in the light of the Swedish Covid-19 strategy, which put a strong emphasis on the individual’s responsibility and that every citizen is expected to follow the recommendations and take precautionary measures to limit the spread of the virus. This approach requires that both public agencies and citizens are capable of navigating the emerging complex crisis communication landscape and requires them to make responsible decisions and take relevant measures.

"Self-Quaranteens" Process COVID-19: Understanding Information Visualization Language in Memes

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a surge of information visualizations that aim to increase our scientific understanding and communicate about the ongoing health crisis with the general public. In this time, there has also been significant use of data visualization language in artefacts from online communities that provide commentary on the pandemic and create meaning through participatory digital culture. Using a qualitative approach, this paper examines over 300 memes collected from a public social media group targeted to young adults in the United States that uses the language of data visualization to discuss topics related to COVID-19. We outline four main ways that data visualization language is used in these memes-as a coarse indicator, as a visual analogy, as an opportunity for augmentation with emotion or interpretation, and as a visual pun-as well as two ways that memes leverage traditional and emerging approaches in the information visualization community. We describe the context in which these memes are socially created and interpreted in light of the political nature of online spaces and connect this work to ongoing research on participation, emotion, and embodiment in information visualization. These results aim to start a conversation about the use of data visualization language in digital culture and more casual networked environments beyond official channels.

PUBLIC RELATIONS STRATEGY OF PT. QUALITAS FLAGSHIP 'Q-GOLF' IN INCREASING CUSTOMERS

One way that companies can do to convey the value of their products is by using public relations or public relations. PT Qualitas Andalan Bersama (Q-golf) is a company that provides online golf course booking services through applications on smartphones. The number of Q-golf customers has decreased on 2018-2019. From these data, it can be concluded that the trend of existing customers has decreased which resulted in a decrease in the number of customers. Existing customers do not show loyalty to Q-golf. Q-golf has implemented a public relations strategy to be able to publicize their products with the aim of increasing customer loyalty. However, the results of the PR strategy carried out by Q-golf showed unsatisfactory results. Therefore, the public relations strategy carried out by Q-golf becomes interesting to analyze. The purpose of this study was to determine the PR strategy of PT Qualitas Andalan Bersama in increasing customer loyalty. This study uses a descriptive qualitative approach. The research was conducted by conducting interviews with five informants. The results of this study are the main roles of Q-golf's public relations are press relations, product publicity, and public affairs. Q-golf's public relations role as lobbying and development does not become the main role but is still carried out by Q-golf's public relations. There are seven public relations tools used by the public relations department of Q-golf, namely news, special events, written materials, audio-visual materials, corporate identity materials, public service activities, and websites and social media. The strategies that have been implemented by Q-golf's PR are strategy of publicity, strategy of persuasion, and strategy of image. Public Relations Q-golf does not implement a strategy of augmentation.

Proposed Event Organizer Small Medium Business Enterprise Architecture in Pandemic Industry 4.0 Era

Covid-19 pandemic affects businesses around the world and the most impacted are small and medium event organizer business (SMB EO) that usually having social gathering event participated by a few hundred participants only. Digital transformation must be executed immediately to adapt to the conditions utilizing Industry 4.0 technology especially in recent pandemic era. This paper study the enterprise architecture design of SMB EO utilizing Industry 4.0 to survive in pandemic era and beyond. The enterprise architecture based on Togaf framework consists of business, application, information, and technology architecture is decribed in this paper. Small business doesn’t have the big capital on investing in technologies and during pandemic where certain technology is scarce may cause the business to be left behind. Choice of utilizing public social media and cloud providers according to the architecture is the key. Once the technology is adopted, business is digitalized then business can be ready to face future metaverse business model.

Beyond abstract space: Architectural experiments for dwelling and concrete utopia in urban China

Urban transformation in China is witnessing a diversification of architectural designs and the more prominent roles played by architects. Notably, recent architectural practices in urban and regional China have increasingly emphasised the social functions and uses of architecture – architecture is mobilised by many architects and their clients to promote public goods, social improvement and extra-economic purposes. The dialectic between material and social transformations constitutes the focus of this paper. To reconceptualise architecture as an active social intervention, this paper first delineates a theoretical outline that starts from Henri Lefebvre’s thesis on the alienation of everyday life and proliferation of abstract space in modern cities. We then engage with the notion of concrete utopia that highlights alternative urban spaces produced by architectural works, which do not radically transcend the dominant capitalist system but intervene into the current conditions by enriching and improving them incrementally. To illustrate this perspective, this paper develops a preliminary reading of two empirical cases based on second-hand materials collected from public media and social media, namely the Aranya project in Changli County, Hebei Province and the renovation project of a traditional house in central Shanghai.

Longitudinal Changes of COVID-19 Symptoms in Social Media: Observational Study.

BackgroundIn December 2019, the COVID-19 outbreak started in China and rapidly spread around the world. Many studies have been conducted to understand the clinical characteristics of COVID-19, and recently postinfection sequelae of this disease have begun to be investigated. However, there is little consensus on the longitudinal changes of lasting physical or psychological symptoms from prior COVID-19 infection.ObjectiveThis study aims to investigate and analyze public social media data from Reddit to understand the longitudinal impact of COVID-19 symptoms before and after recovery from COVID-19.MethodsWe collected 22,890 Reddit posts that were generated by 14,401 authors from March 14 to December 16, 2020. Using active learning and intensive manual inspection, 292 (2.03%) active authors, who were infected by COVID-19 and frequently reported disease progress on Reddit, along with their 2213 (9.67%) longitudinal posts, were identified. Machine learning tools to extract biomedical information were applied to identify COVID-19 symptoms mentioned in the Reddit posts. We then examined longitudinal changes in individual physiological and psychological characteristics before and after recovery from COVID-19 infection.ResultsIn total, 58 physiological and 3 psychological symptoms were identified in social media before and after recovery from COVID-19 infection. From the analyses, we found that symptoms of patients with COVID-19 lasted 2.5 months. On average, symptoms appeared around a month before recovery and remained for 1.5 months after recovery. Well-known COVID-19 symptoms, such as fever, cough, and chest congestion, appeared relatively earlier in patient journeys and were frequently observed before recovery from COVID-19. Meanwhile, mental discomfort or distress, such as brain fog or stress, fatigue, and manifestations on toes or fingers, were frequently mentioned after recovery and remained as intermediate- and longer-term sequelae.ConclusionsIn this study, we showed the dynamic changes in COVID-19 symptoms during the infection and recovery phases of the disease. Our findings suggest the feasibility of using social media data for investigating disease states and understanding the evolution of the physiological and psychological characteristics of COVID-19 infection over time.

The Effectiveness of Storytelling to Improve Handwashing Knowledge and Attitude in School-Age Children in Indonesia

During the COVID-19 pandemic, good knowledge and attitude towards handwashing are essential. Education through various media is found in public places, television, social media and others. However, a specific approach is needed for children of school age as a vulnerable population, since the prevalence of COVID-19 is relatively high in this group. Storytelling is a method to deliver health education and develop cognitive (knowledge), affective (feelings), social and conative aspects in children. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of storytelling in improving handwashing knowledge and attitudes among school-age children. This research used a quantitative approach with a pre-experimental one-group pretest-posttest design, and it was conducted in April-May 2021. A total of 40 respondents participated. Data were collected using a self-filled questionnaire related to handwashing knowledge and attitude with good reliability (Cronbach’s alpha > 0.881 [knowledge] and > 0925 [attitude]). Data were analyzed using SPSS Version 23 for univariate and bivariate formulas. Storytelling had a significant impact on knowledge and attitudes in the school-age children (p < 0.001).
 Keywords: storytelling, hand puppets, knowledge, attitude, school-age children

Qualitative analysis of sinus surgery posts on popular social media platforms

IntroductionSocial media platforms are constantly evolving and expanding to new populations, exposing their users to various topics and serving as an informal educational resource. Medical ideas and topics are freely discussed online, making understanding of what is present on these platforms of particular importance to the practicing medical professional. In the field of otolaryngology, the public social media portrayal of sinus surgery has not been previously reported. MethodsSocial media posts using keywords related to sinus surgery on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok were qualitatively analyzed and categorized based on media type, author, subject, timing, depiction, and popularity. ResultsThe total number of posts included in final analysis was 1798, with a majority stemming from Instagram (68.5%), then Facebook (20.2%) and finally TikTok (11.3%). The most common type of media analyzed was images (69.0%) and patients were more often authors of posts (45.1%) as compared to physicians (34.8%). The subjects of the posts were nearly equally reassurance regarding surgery (41.3%) and educational or informational posts (38.8%) and were most commonly timed in the postoperative period (41.3%). Sinus surgery was depicted in a positive fashion most frequently (56.6%), notably compared against the negative portrayal at 3.2%. Negative posts most commonly cited postoperative pain or bleeding. ConclusionsMost social media posts analyzed in this multi-platform study depicted sinus surgery in a positive fashion. Patients tended to post in the postoperative or perioperative period, whereas physicians tender to post intraoperative educational posts. Negative posts were most commonly centered around postoperative pain. Cautious interpretation of these results could be used for improving patient care and outreach in the digital age.

Dynamic face authentication systems: Deep learning verification for camera close-Up and head rotation paradigms

The popularity of face-authentication systems has also generated interest in the study of malicious authentication attempts, such as face spoofing attacks. In this study we investigate two dynamic face-authentication challenges: the camera close-up, and head-rotation paradigms. For each paradigm we developed an ML-based face-authentication system that performs the tasks of liveness detection and face verification. In order to generate structured data-representations from the videos collected in the wild, we designed feature representations that extract three-dimensional and spatial characteristics of a face, while also capturing the particular liveness cues of the requested challenge-based movements. Furthermore, a set of Neural-Network models that employ Convolutional Neural Networks and Siamese Neural Network architectures were proposed. To train and test our models we collected a dataset of 177 live videos recorded by 41 different subjects and a set of 243 attack attempts in uncontrolled scenarios. The resulting NN models yield good performance against multiple types of media-based attacks (printed-attacks, screen-attacks, 2D-masks, videos acquired from public social media, deep fakes). The camera close-up system presented an overall liveness detection accuracy of 97.7% and a face verification accuracy of 97.6%. On the other hand, the evaluation of the head-rotation system resulted in a liveness detection accuracy of 92.4% and face verification accuracy of 98.1%. Face authentication methods based on dynamic user-challenges constitute a scalable approach that does not require specialized hardware to increase the security of face authentication systems in realistic usage scenarios. The proposed methods not only make it harder for attackers to generate spoofing attacks, but they also constitute a practical complement to static biometric authentication systems.

Social Media Use, eHealth Literacy, Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices Toward COVID-19 Vaccination Among Chinese College Students in the Phase of Regular Epidemic Prevention and Control: A Cross-Sectional Survey.

BackgroundCollege students are at a high risk of being infected with COVID-19, and they are one of the key population clusters that should be vaccinated. The present study aimed to investigate the knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) toward COVID-19 vaccination among Chinese college students, and to determine the relationships among social media use, eHealth literacy, and KAP toward COVID-19 vaccination among Chinese college students.MethodsA cross-sectional survey was conducted by administering questionnaires to evaluate KAP toward COVID-19 vaccination, social media use, and eHealth literacy in one of the groups of Chinese college students. Multiple linear regression analysis was performed to determine the association among social media use, eHealth literacy, and KAP regarding COVID-19 vaccination.ResultsAmong the 3,785 validated questionnaires collected from Chinese college students, male students accounted for 59.74%, and the mean age of the college students was (20.90 ± 3.14) years. More than four-fifths (83.43%) of the college students spent <2 h a week on social media, and the official and public social media were most common social media types. Additionally, the scores for KAP toward COVID-19 vaccination ranging from 0 to 48 among college students were high (39.73 ± 5.58), lowest for knowledge domain (3.07 ± 0.76), and the highest for practice domain (3.47 ± 0.63). Female college students who were in good health status and who spent more time browsing social media, frequently used official and public social media, rarely used aggregated social media, and had a relatively strong self-perception of eHealth literacy and information acquisition of eHealth literacy were more likely to have high levels of KAP regarding COVID-19 vaccination.ConclusionsOverall, Chinese college students have excellent KAP toward COVID-19 vaccination. Based on the findings of this study, we recommend that health counseling regarding COVID-19 vaccination should target male students and those with inferior health status. Dissemination of health education regarding COVID-19 vaccination should be purposely conducted, and cooperation with official and public social media platforms should be promoted. Finally, eHealth literacy, which is one of the predictors of the level of KAP regarding COVID-19 vaccination, should be emphasized.