Social Presence for Strategic Health Messages: An Examination of State Governments&apos; Use of Twitter to Tackle the Covid-19 Pandemic

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Abstract

Scholars investigated the role of social presence theory in numerous communication contexts. However, we have limited knowledge about the impact of social presence strategies on public attention during a pandemic. This study fills this gap by investigating the connections between social presence strategies, Covid-19 strategies, and public attention. Twitter data of state governments from January 21, 2020 to July 21, 2020 were downloaded for this study. Content analysis of 1,500 randomly selected posts revealed that social presence strategies were effective in generating public attention on Twitter. Furthermore, expressing appreciation, providing guidance, and informing the publics about governments' actions generated public attention. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

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A New Dimension of Health Care: Systematic Review of the Uses, Benefits, and Limitations of Social Media for Health Communication

S Anne Moorhead, Diane E Hazlett, Laura Harrison … (2013)

Background There is currently a lack of information about the uses, benefits, and limitations of social media for health communication among the general public, patients, and health professionals from primary research. Objective To review the current published literature to identify the uses, benefits, and limitations of social media for health communication among the general public, patients, and health professionals, and identify current gaps in the literature to provide recommendations for future health communication research. Methods This paper is a review using a systematic approach. A systematic search of the literature was conducted using nine electronic databases and manual searches to locate peer-reviewed studies published between January 2002 and February 2012. Results The search identified 98 original research studies that included the uses, benefits, and/or limitations of social media for health communication among the general public, patients, and health professionals. The methodological quality of the studies assessed using the Downs and Black instrument was low; this was mainly due to the fact that the vast majority of the studies in this review included limited methodologies and was mainly exploratory and descriptive in nature. Seven main uses of social media for health communication were identified, including focusing on increasing interactions with others, and facilitating, sharing, and obtaining health messages. The six key overarching benefits were identified as (1) increased interactions with others, (2) more available, shared, and tailored information, (3) increased accessibility and widening access to health information, (4) peer/social/emotional support, (5) public health surveillance, and (6) potential to influence health policy. Twelve limitations were identified, primarily consisting of quality concerns and lack of reliability, confidentiality, and privacy. Conclusions Social media brings a new dimension to health care as it offers a medium to be used by the public, patients, and health professionals to communicate about health issues with the possibility of potentially improving health outcomes. Social media is a powerful tool, which offers collaboration between users and is a social interaction mechanism for a range of individuals. Although there are several benefits to the use of social media for health communication, the information exchanged needs to be monitored for quality and reliability, and the users’ confidentiality and privacy need to be maintained. Eight gaps in the literature and key recommendations for future health communication research were provided. Examples of these recommendations include the need to determine the relative effectiveness of different types of social media for health communication using randomized control trials and to explore potential mechanisms for monitoring and enhancing the quality and reliability of health communication using social media. Further robust and comprehensive evaluation and review, using a range of methodologies, are required to establish whether social media improves health communication practice both in the short and long terms.

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What Makes Online Content Viral?

Jonah Berger, Katherine Milkman (2012)

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Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education

D.Randy Garrison, Terry Anderson, David Walter Archer (1999)

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Public Relat Rev

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Public Relat Rev

Title: Public Relations Review

Publisher: Elsevier Inc.

ISSN (Print): 0363-8111

ISSN (Electronic): 1873-4537

Publication date PMC-release: 23 June 2022

Publication date (Electronic): 23 June 2022

Electronic Location Identifier: 102223

Affiliations

[0005]Advertising and Public Relations Program School of Communications Grand Valley State University

Article

Publisher Item ID: S0363-8111(22)00078-9 Publisher ID: 102223

DOI: 10.1016/j.pubrev.2022.102223

PMC ID: 9221632

SO-VID: 2d26c631-b5fc-45a9-a12c-beecb6e996e8

License:

Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

History

Date received : 20 May 2021

Date revision received : 2 June 2022

Date accepted : 19 June 2022

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