Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Oct 8, 2020
Date Accepted: Feb 17, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Mar 2, 2021
Examining Tweet Content and Engagement of Canadian Public Health Agencies and Decision-Makers during COVID-19: Mixed Methods Analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
Effective communication during a health crisis can ease public concerns and promote the adoption of important risk-mitigating behaviors. Public health agencies and leaders have served as the primary communicators of information related to COVID-19 and a key part of their public outreach has taken place on social media platforms.
Objective:
This study examined the content and engagement of COVID-19 Tweets authored by Canadian public health agencies and decision-makers. We propose ways that public health accounts can adjust their Tweeting practices during public health crises to improve risk communication and maximize engagement.
Methods:
We retrieved data from Tweets by Canadian public health agencies and decision-makers from January 1st, 2020 to June 30th, 2020. The Twitter accounts were categorized as either a public health agency, regional/local health department, provincial health authority, medical health officer, or minister of health. We analyzed trends in COVID-19 Tweet engagement and conducted a content analysis on a stratified random sample of 485 Tweets to examine the message functions and risk communication strategies used by each account type.
Results:
We analyzed 32,737 Tweets authored by 111 Canadian public health Twitter accounts, of which 6,982 Tweets were about COVID-19. Medical health officers authored the largest percentage of COVID-related Tweets (35%) relative to total Tweets, and averaged the highest number of retweets per COVID-19 Tweet (60 retweets per Tweet). Public health agencies had the highest frequency of daily Tweets about COVID-19 throughout the study period. Compared to Tweets containing media and user-mentions, hashtags and URLs were used in Tweets more frequently by all account types, appearing in 69% and 68% of COVID-related Tweets, respectively. Tweets containing hashtags also received the highest average retweets (47 retweets per Tweet). Our content analysis revealed that of the three Tweet message functions analyzed (information, action, community), Tweets providing information constituted the largest share (42%); however, Tweets promoting actions from users received higher average retweets (55 retweets per Tweet). When examining Tweets that received one or more retweet (n=359), the difference between mean retweets across the message functions was statistically significant (p<.001). Risk communication strategies that we examined were not widely used by any account type, only appearing in 262 out of 485 Tweets. However, when these strategies were used, these Tweets received more retweets compared to Tweets that did not use any risk communication strategies (p<.001) (61 retweets versus 13 retweets on average).
Conclusions:
Public health agencies and decision-makers ought to examine what messaging best meets the needs of their Twitter audiences to maximize shares of their communications. Public health accounts that do not currently employ risk communication strategies in their Tweets may be missing an important opportunity to engage with information users about the mitigation of health risks related to COVID-19.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.