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This study investigates regional and local governmental agencies resilience in their use of risk communication with other governmental agencies. Analyses are based on the case of South Korea's response to the 2015 outbreak of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus. Based on a survey of governmental organizations, the study indicates that governmental agencies seek either reciprocal or redundant communication ties with other governmental agencies while they aim to secure crucial information from high‐level organizations to tackle the transboundary nature of the infectious disease during the outbreak response. Semi‐structured interviews with South Korean officials confirm that subnational governmental agencies rely on the national government and also seek information from other regional and local agencies to improve the resilience in interagency risk communication and to prevent the further transmission of the infectious disease in their local jurisdictions. This study empirically demonstrates how governmental agencies cope with the uncertainty of infectious disease transmission by expanding risk communication channels when hierarchical communication channels and information systems do not meet the needs of outbreak response. The research findings contribute to the understanding of the interactions across organizations in addressing the needs of public health crises that are transboundary in nature and provide important lessons for outbreak responses in South Korea as well as in other countries.

Introduction Alcohol use disorder symptoms frequently occur in adolescents and younger adults who seldom acknowledge a need for help. We identified sociodemographic, clinical, and familial predictors of alcohol problem recognition and help seeking in an offspring of twins sample. Method We analyzed longitudinal data from the Children of Alcoholics and Twins as Parents studies, which are combinable longitudinal data sources due to their equivalent design. We analyzed respondents (n=1,073, 56.0% of the total sample) with alcohol use disorder symptoms at the baseline interview. Familial characteristics included perceptions of alcohol problems and help seeking for alcohol problems within the immediate family and a categorical variable indicating genetic and environmental risk. We used logistic regression to examine predictors of alcohol problem recognition and help seeking. Results Approximately 25.9% recognized their alcohol problems and 26.7% sought help for drinking. In covariate-adjusted analyses, help seeking among family members predicted problem recognition, several clinical characteristics predicted both problem recognition and help seeking, and familial risk predicted help seeking. Alcohol problem recognition mediated the association between alcohol use disorder symptoms and incident help seeking. Conclusions Facilitating the self-recognition of alcohol use disorder symptoms, and perhaps the awareness of family members’ help seeking for alcohol problems, may be potentially promising methods to facilitate help seeking.

Purpose -This study aims to explore Twitter use by Korea's central government by classifying the government's Twitter-based networking strategies into government-to-citizen (G2C) and government-to-government (G2G) strategies. Design/methodology/approach -The study investigates the nature of social media interactions and networking strategies in the Korean government by extracting tweets, follower/following relationships, and hyperlinks for 32 ministries. Network patterns and networking strategies are reviewed through descriptive statistical analysis and social network analysis to map the government's Twitter activity. Findings -The results indicate that the government's direct networking strategy targeting citizens does not necessarily motivate their participation in the government's social media activities but that it plays an instrumental role in reinforcing G2G relationships. Originality/value -This study investigates the social media use patterns (e.g. network properties and co-link analyses) and strategies (e.g. the reciprocity of relationships and content-push strategies) in the context of G2C and G2G relationships in Korea's public sector.