Social Networks’ Engagement During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Spain: Health Media vs. Healthcare Professionals

Abstract

An increased use of social networks is one of the most far-reaching consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Aside from the traditional media, as the main drivers of social communication in crisis situations, individual profiles have emerged supported by social networks, which have had a similar impact to the more specialized communication media. This is the hypothesis of the research presented, which is focused on health communication and based on a virtual ethnography methodology with the use of social metrics. The aim is to understand the relationship established between the population in general and digital media in particular through the measurement of engagement. In this regard, a comparative study was carried out that describes this phenomenon over a period of six months on three social networks: YouTube, Twitter and Instagram, with a sample composed of specialized health media versus healthcare professionals. The results point to a new communications model that opens up a new space for agents whose content has a degree of engagement comparable to and even exceeding that of digital media specialized in health communication. The conclusions show that the crisis of the pandemic has accelerated the transformation of the communication sector, creating new challenges for the communication industry, media professionals, and higher education institutions related to market demands.

Locking down the Impact of New Zealand’s COVID-19 Alert Level Changes on Pets

“…To ensure user confidence, on 17 March 2020 the major social network companies declared that they would work closely together to combat false and misinformation and promote information from official sources [ 21 ]. Four levels of social network engagement have been acknowledged: (1) observer, (2) follower, (3) participant and (4) defender which can be further condensed into two levels of: passive engagement (level 2) and cognitive participative engagement (levels 3 and 4) [ 22 ]. Of the CANZ posts, infographics were engaged with by users more extensively than video resources.…”

“…Compared to the infographics, the videos had less engagement and required longer viewing times (7–55 min) with the highest average watch time being 17 s. Interestingly, TikTok, a video sharing platform that has gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic uses a short-form format of 15 s [ 25 ]. Pérez-Escoda and colleagues highlight that social audiences need to be part of the media flow [ 22 ] which was reinforced by Raamkumar and colleagues, who observed that Facebook users engaging with content from health authorities were more likely to share a post aiding the dissemination of information than they were to react or comment [ 26 ]. It could be speculated that the anticipated uptake by one’s followers influences how users interact with content and in this respect those resources that require less time to view may be perceived as having better uptake by other social network users gaining more positive reactions (e.g., like, care, love), comments and shares.…”

Information on the COVID-19 Pandemic in Daily Newspapers’ Front Pages: Case Study of Spain and Italy

“…The role of social media in spreading misleading health information is not new [ 3 ], but the COVID-19 crisis has shown the critical impact of this new information environment [ 4 ]. Many studies have focused on and are still focusing on how the disintermediated role of social media may foster misinformation: Scholars studying Iran [ 5 ] and Spain [ 6 ], stress how social media spread rumors, others [ 7 ] try to analyze the structure of this infodemic, or concentrate on the effect of media exposure [ 8 ].…”

How Russian Youth Consume Information: Case Study of the Political Science Students of the Financial University

“…В условиях принудительной по своей сути цифровизации становится важным внимательно исследовать структурные трансформации в сфере массового информационного потребления в интернет-пространстве. Неслучайно значительное число ученых -социологов, политологов, коммуникативистов уделяют сегодня особое внимание проблемам, связанным с изменениями, происходящими в цифровой среде в аспекте изменения структуры и объемов информационного потребления [Volodenkov, Pastarmadzhieva 2020;Pérez-Escoda et al 2020;Iivari et al 2020;Agostino et al 2020;Hussain 2020].…”