Jeannette Sutton, PhD, is an Associate Professor, College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cyber Security, University of Albany, SUNY, Albany, NY. Scott L. Renshaw is a Graduate Student and Carter T. Butts, PhD, is a Professor; both in the Department of Sociology, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA.
Health Secur. 2020 Dec;18(6):454-460. doi: 10.1089/hs.2020.0105. Epub 2020 Oct 9.
In this paper, we capture, identify, and describe the patterns of longitudinal risk communication from public health communicating agencies on Twitter during the first 60 days of the response to the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We collected 138,546 tweets from 696 targeted accounts from February 1 to March 31, 2020, employing term frequency-inverse document frequency to identify keyword hashtags that were distinctive on each day. Our team conducted inductive content analysis to identify emergent themes that characterize shifts in public health risk communication efforts. As a result, we found 7 distinct periods of communication in the first 60 days of the pandemic, each characterized by a differing emphasis on communicating information, individual and collection action, sustaining motivation, and setting social norms. We found that longitudinal risk communication in response to the COVID-19 pandemic shifted as secondary threats arose, while continuing to promote pro-social activities to reduce impact on vulnerable populations. Identifying patterns of risk communication longitudinally allows public health communicators to observe changes in topics and priorities. Observations from the first 60 days of the COVID-19 pandemic prefigures ongoing messaging needs for this event and for future disease outbreaks.
在本文中，我们捕捉、识别并描述了在应对新型冠状病毒病 2019（COVID-19）大流行的最初 60 天期间，公共卫生传播机构在 Twitter 上的纵向风险传播模式。我们从 2020 年 2 月 1 日至 3 月 31 日收集了来自 696 个目标账户的 138546 条推文，采用词频-逆文档频率来识别每天独特的关键字标签。我们的团队进行了归纳内容分析，以确定突出公共卫生风险沟通工作转变的新兴主题。结果，我们在大流行的头 60 天中发现了 7 个不同的沟通阶段，每个阶段的特点是强调传达信息、个人和集体行动、维持动机和设定社会规范。我们发现，随着次生威胁的出现，针对 COVID-19 的纵向风险沟通发生了变化，同时继续促进有利于减少弱势群体影响的亲社会活动。纵向风险沟通的识别使得公共卫生传播者能够观察主题和优先事项的变化。COVID-19 大流行前 60 天的观察结果预示着该事件和未来疾病爆发的持续信息需求。
