Emergency Response and Risk Communication Effects of Local Media during COVID-19 Pandemic in China: A Study Based on a Social Media Network

Lei Jiang, Yujia Huang, Haonan Cheng, Ting Zhang and Lei Huang
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Lei Jiang: State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
Yujia Huang: State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
Haonan Cheng: State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
Ting Zhang: State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
Lei Huang: State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 20, 1-16

Abstract: As the country where the COVID-19 was first reported and initially broke out, China has controlled the spread of the pandemic well. The pandemic prevention process included emergency response and risk communication, both of which could notably increase public participation, people’s anxiety has been alleviated, their confidence in the government has been enhanced, and the implementation of prevention and control measures has been understood. This study selected 157,283 articles published by 447 accounts across 326 cities in February 2020 from WeChat, the largest social media application in China, to systematically compare the spatial distributions in the effectiveness of emergency responses and risk communication. The results showed that there were significant regional differences in the effectiveness of emergency response and risk communication during the pandemic period in China. The effectiveness of emergency response and risk communication are related to the exposure risk to the COVID-19, the level of economy, culture, and education of the region, the type of accounts and articles, and the ranking of the articles in posts. The timeliness and distribution types of articles should take into account the psychological changes in communication recipients to avoid the dissemination of homogenized information to the masses and the resulting information receiving fatigue period.

Keywords: emergency response; risk communication; COVID-19; public participation; social media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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