Agenda Dynamics on Social Media During COVID-19 Pandemic: Interactions Between Public, Media, and Government Agendas

Shu-huan, Zhou; Zheng, Xia

doi:10.1080/10510974.2022.2082504

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the public was no longer passive consumers of social media. Our results indicating the different concerns of vaccination between the government and regular users corroborate previous findings by Zhou and Zheng [ 44 ] who found that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the government’s Weibo account exhibited a more propaganda-oriented approach, whereas public accounts were more attentive to issues that directly pertained to self-interest, such as protective measures against the virus and minimizing financial losses. Unlike other political issues, the government may have less impact on shaping public agenda due to the more collected information possessed by the public.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

“…We did not categorize the specific levels, instead treating all government authorities as a single entity, to gain a clear understanding of the overall position of the Macao Government in vaccine communication. This was also a practice adopted by previous research (eg, [ 44 ]).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Any confusion that might have occurred during classification was resolved through discussion. This approach allowed for the categorization of users into specific groups, enabling a systematic analysis of user communication and interactions within the Facebook platform [ 44 ].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Government-Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Collaboration in Macao’s COVID-19 Vaccine Promotion: Social Media Case Study

Xian,

Neuwirth,

Chang

2024

JMIR Infodemiology

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Background The COVID-19 pandemic triggered unprecedented global vaccination efforts, with social media being a popular tool for vaccine promotion. Objective This study probes into Macao’s COVID-19 vaccine communication dynamics, with a focus on the multifaceted impacts of government agendas on social media. Methods We scrutinized 22,986 vaccine-related Facebook posts from January 2020 to August 2022 in Macao. Using automated content analysis and advanced statistical methods, we unveiled intricate agenda dynamics between government and nongovernment entities. Results “Vaccine importance” and “COVID-19 risk” were the most prominent topics co-occurring in the overall vaccine communication. The government tended to emphasize “COVID-19 risk” and “vaccine effectiveness,” while regular users prioritized vaccine safety and distribution, indicating a discrepancy in these agendas. Nonetheless, the government has limited impact on regular users in the aspects of vaccine importance, accessibility, affordability, and trust in experts. The agendas of government and nongovernment users intertwined, illustrating complex interactions. Conclusions This study reveals the influence of government agendas on public discourse, impacting environmental awareness, public health education, and the social dynamics of inclusive communication during health crises. Inclusive strategies, accommodating public concerns, and involving diverse stakeholders are paramount for effective social media communication during health crises.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Government-Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Collaboration in Macao’s COVID-19 Vaccine Promotion: Social Media Case Study

Xian,

Neuwirth,

Chang

2024

JMIR Infodemiology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, in crisis communication, journalists rely extensively on government sources (Priest et al, 1991;Shoemaker and Reese, 2013). During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese government's agenda caused changes in the media's agenda on social media (Zhou and Zheng, 2022). These studies underscore how media and government agendas impact the public.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Affective agenda dynamics on social media: interactions of emotional content posted by the public, government, and media during the COVID-19 pandemic

Zhou,

Yang,

Wang

et al. 2023

Humanit Soc Sci Commun

Self Cite

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Emotions shared by posters on social media can have a profound impact on individuals and society. This was particularly evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. To examine the types, trends, and dynamics of emotions communicated by the public, government, and media, this study collected 67,689 public posts, 36,740 government posts, and 126,988 media posts on Sina Weibo during the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The vector autoregression model and Granger causality analysis were used to measure affective agenda networks and examine affective agenda dynamics. The findings show that the public, government, and media predominantly expressed positive emotions on Sina Weibo. The findings also reveal the significant influence of government emotions on media emotions, which subsequently affects public emotions. This study extends agenda-setting theory by integrating the dimension of emotional contagion. It underscores the potential for government and media to shape public emotions during health crises in order to maintain social order and increase compliance with emergency policies.

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“…Although the application of agenda-setting theory has been apparent in political contexts [ 21 ], the theory has long been applied in health issues [ 22 ] and crisis communication research [ 23 ]. In the context of COVID-19, agenda-setting became more diverse and interrelated where the media agenda was mostly shaped by the government and the public [ 24 ]. During the early stage of the pandemic in Australia, the national media coverage synchronized with the government-led agenda, including daily press conferences from State and Federal health leaders, and continuously relayed information from the health officials to the grassroots level [ 17 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

News Coverage of Face Masks in Australia During the Early COVID-19 Pandemic: Topic Modeling Study

Dasgupta¹,

Amin²,

Paris³

et al. 2023

JMIR Infodemiology

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Background During the COVID-19 pandemic, web-based media coverage of preventative strategies proliferated substantially. News media was constantly informing people about changes in public health policy and practices such as mask-wearing. Hence, exploring news media content on face mask use is useful to analyze dominant topics and their trends. Objective The aim of the study was to examine news related to face masks as well as to identify related topics and temporal trends in Australian web-based news media during the early COVID-19 pandemic period. Methods Following data collection from the Google News platform, a trend analysis on the mask-related news titles from Australian news publishers was conducted. Then, a latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling algorithm was applied along with evaluation matrices (quantitative and qualitative measures). Afterward, topic trends were developed and analyzed in the context of mask use during the pandemic. Results A total of 2345 face mask–related eligible news titles were collected from January 25, 2020, to January 25, 2021. Mask-related news showed an increasing trend corresponding to increasing COVID-19 cases in Australia. The best-fitted latent Dirichlet allocation model discovered 8 different topics with a coherence score of 0.66 and a perplexity measure of –11.29. The major topics were T1 (mask-related international affairs), T2 (introducing mask mandate in places such as Melbourne and Sydney), and T4 (antimask sentiment). Topic trends revealed that T2 was the most frequent topic in January 2021 (77 news titles), corresponding to the mandatory mask-wearing policy in Sydney. Conclusions This study demonstrated that Australian news media reflected a wide range of community concerns about face masks, peaking as COVID-19 incidence increased. Harnessing the news media platforms for understanding the media agenda and community concerns may assist in effective health communication during a pandemic response.

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Agenda Dynamics on Social Media During COVID-19 Pandemic: Interactions Between Public, Media, and Government Agendas

Cited by 13 publications

References 53 publications

Government-Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Collaboration in Macao’s COVID-19 Vaccine Promotion: Social Media Case Study

Government-Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Collaboration in Macao’s COVID-19 Vaccine Promotion: Social Media Case Study

Affective agenda dynamics on social media: interactions of emotional content posted by the public, government, and media during the COVID-19 pandemic

News Coverage of Face Masks in Australia During the Early COVID-19 Pandemic: Topic Modeling Study

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