Abstracts
Abstract
This study aims to investigate the use of Twitter by Saudi government agencies as an information dissemination source to communicate COVID-19-related information. A total of 8,718 tweets from 33 government agencies were collected during a nine-month period from 1 January to 30 September 2020. The results show that Twitter played a dominant role in the crisis communication process. In addition, providing instructions and adjusting information, as well as management reputation, was a basic strategy to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. Furthermore, communication in terms of topics, actors, style, tones and quantity has changed during different phases of the crisis. The study argues that a centralized and highly organized government structure is particularly important in driving an information and communication strategy to tackle the pandemic, and it helps deliver messages with a common identity that promotes extensive public and government interaction.
Keywords:
- social media,
- Twitter,
- crisis information communication,
- information provision,
- Saudi Arabia,
- COVID-19 pandemic
Résumé
Cette étude vise à examiner l'utilisation de Twitter par les agences gouvernementales saoudiennes comme source de diffusion d'information pour communiquer des données liées à la COVID-19. Un total de 8 718 tweets provenant de 33 agences gouvernementales ont été recueillis sur une période de neuf mois, du 1er janvier au 30 septembre 2020. Les résultats montrent que Twitter a joué un rôle dominant dans le processus de communication en situation de crise. De plus, la diffusion de consignes, l'ajustement de l'information et la gestion de la réputation ont constitué une stratégie fondamentale pour répondre à la crise liée à la COVID-19. Par ailleurs, la communication en termes de sujets, d'acteurs, de style, de ton et de quantité a évolué au cours des différentes phases de la crise. L'étude soutient qu'une structure gouvernementale centralisée et hautement organisée est particulièrement importante pour piloter une stratégie d'information et de communication afin de faire face à la pandémie, et qu'elle contribue à véhiculer des messages porteurs d'une identité commune favorisant une interaction étendue entre le public et le gouvernement.
Mots-clés :
- Twitter,
- média sociaux,
- crise,
- sources d'information,
- pandémie de la COVID-19
Appendices
Bibliography
- Abedin, B., & Babar, A. (2018). Institutional vs. Non-institutional use of social media during emergency response: a case of Twitter in 2014 Australian Bush Fire. Information Systems Frontiers, 20, 729-740. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-017-9789-4
- Addawood, A. (2020). Coronavirus: Public Arabic Twitter Dataset. https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202004.0263/v1
- Aldekhyyel, R., Binkheder, S., Aldekhyyel, S., Alhumaid, N., Hassounah, M., AlMogbel, A., & Jamal, A. (2022). The Saudi Ministries Twitter communication strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic: A qualitative content analysis study. Public Health in Practice, 3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhip.2022.100257.
- Algaissi, A., Alharbi, N., Hassanain, M., & Hashem, A. (2020). Preparedness and response to COVID-19 in Saudi Arabia: building on MERS experience. Journal of Infection and Public Health, 13, (6), 834-838. doi:10.1016/j.jiph.2020.04.016.
- Alomari E., Katib I., Albeshri, A., & Mehmood, R. (2021). COVID-19: detecting government pandemic measure-s and public concerns from Twitter Arabic data using distributed machine learning. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18, (1). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18010282
- Alsudias, L., & Rayson, P. (2020). COVID-19 and Arabic Twitter: how can Arab world governments and public health organizations learn from social media? Retrieved from: https://aclanthology.org/2020.nlpcovid19-acl.16/
- Altayar, M, (2018). Motivations for open data adoption: An institutional theory perspective. Government Information Quarterly, 35, (4), 633-643. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2018.09.006.
- Bihari, S., & Awasthi, A. (2018). Use of adjusting and instructing information in product harm crisis communication. Pacific Business Review International, 11, (4), 86-96. http://www.pbr.co.in/2018/2018_month/Oct/8.pdf
- Chen, E., Lerman, K., & Ferrara, E. (2020). Tracking social media discourse about the COVID-19 pandemic: development of a public Coronavirus Twitter data set. JMIR Public Health Surveill, 6, (2). doi:10.2196/19273
- Chew, C., & Eysenbach, G. (2010). Pandemics in the age of Twitter: content analysis of tweets during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak. PLoS One, 29, 5, (11). doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0014118.
- Coleman, V. (2013). Social media as a primary source: a coming of age. Retrieved from:https://er.educause.edu/articles/2013/12/social-media-as-a-primary-source-a-coming-of-age
- Coombs, W. (2019). Ongoing crisis communication: planning, managing, and responding. Thousand Oaks, California, SAGE Publications.
- Cui, Y., Ni, S., Shen, S., & Wang, Z. (2020). Modeling the dynamics of information dissemination under disaster. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 537, (1), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2019.122822.
- DePaula, N., Dincelli, E., & Harrison, T. (2018). Toward a typology of government social media communication: democratic goals, symbolic acts and self-presentation. Government Information Quarterly, 35, (1), 98-108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2017.10].003
- Eom, S., Hwang, H., & Kim, J. (2018). Can social media increase government responsiveness? A case study of Seoul, Korea. Government Information Quarterly, 35, (1), 109-122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2017.10.002
- Górska, A., Dobija, D., Grossi, G., & Staniszewska, Z. (2022). Getting through COVID-19 together: understanding local governments' social media communication. Cities, 121, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2021.103453
- Gruzd, A., Lannigan, J., & Quigley, K. (2018). Examining government cross-platform engagement in social media: Instagram vs Twitter and the big lift project. Government Information Quarterly, 35, (4), 579-587. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2018.09.005.
- Guidry, J., Jin, Y., Orr, C., Messner, M., & Meganck, S. (2017). Ebola on Instagram and Twitter: how health organizations address the health crisis in their social media engagement. Public Relations Review, 43, (3), 477-486. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2017.04.009
- Hagen, L., Keller, T., Neely, S., DePaula, N., & Robert-Cooperman, C. (2018). Crisis communications in the age of social media: a network analysis of Zika-related tweets. Social Science Computer Review, 36, (5), 523-541. doi: 10.1177/0894439317721985.
- Haouari, F., Hasanain, M., Suwaileh, R., & Elsayed, T. (2020). ArCOV-19: The First Arabic COVID-19 Twitter Dataset with Propagation Networks. Retrieved from:https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.05861
- Harrison, S., & Johnson, P. (2019). Challenges in the adoption of crisis crowdsourcing and social media in in Canadian emergency management. Government Information Quarterly, 36, (3), 501-509. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2019.04.002
- Jin, Y., Liu, F., & Austin, L. (2014). Examining the role of social media in effective crisis management: the effects of crisis origin, information form, and source on publics’ crisis responses. Communication Research, 41, (1), 74-94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0093650211423918.
- Kara, A. (2019). Crisis communication in the digital age: manage or rampage. Retrieved from: https://www.cambridgescholars.com/resources/pdfs/978-1-5275-2156-8-sample.pdf
- Keyhole., (2020). Retrieved from: https://keyhole.co
- Kim, S., & Liu, B., (2012). Are all crises Opportunities? a comparison of how corporate and government organizations responded to the 2009 flu pandemic. Journal of Public Relations Research, 24, (1), 69-85. DOI: 10.1080/1062726X.2012.626136
- La, V., Pham, T., Ho, M., Nguyen, M., Nguyen, K., Vuong, T., Nguyen, H., Tran, T., Khuc, Q., Ho, M., & Vuong, Q. (2020). Policy response, social media and science journalism for the sustainability of the public health system amid the COVID-19 outbreak: The Vietnam lessons. Sustainability, 12, (7), 2931. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12072931
- Liao, Q., Yuan, J., Dong, M., Yang, L., Fielding, R., & Lam, W. (2020). Public engagement and government responsiveness in the communications about COVID-19 during the early epidemic sage in China: infodemiology study on social media data. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22. DOI: 10.2196/18796
- Mansoor, M. (2021). Citizens' trust in government as a function of good governance and government agency's provision of quality information on social media during COVID-19. Government Information Quarterly, 38, (4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2021.101597.
- Mensah, I. K., Adams, S., Adjei, J. K., & Mwakapesa, D. S. (2022). Drivers of egovernment adoption amidst COVID-19 pandemic: The Information Adoption Model (IAM) approach. Information Development, 38(4), 494-509. https://doi.org/10.1177/02666669211010872
- Mergel, I. (2013) Social media adoption and resulting tactics in the U.S. federal government. Government Information Quarterly, 30, (2), 123-130. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2012.12.004
- Ministry of Health, (2020). Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19). Retrieved from: https://www.moh.gov.sa/en/Ministry/HotTopics/Pages/COVID-19.aspx
- Mori, E., Barabaschi, B., Cantoni, F., & Virtuani, R. (2020). Local governments' communication through Facebook. evidences from COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. Journal of Public Affairs, 21, https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2551
- Nikolovska, M., Johnson, S., & Ekblom, P. (2020). "Show this thread": policing, disruption and mobilisation through Twitter: an analysis of UK law enforcement tweeting practices during the Covid-19 pandemic. Crime science, 9, (1), https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-020-00129-2
- Padeiro, M., Bueno-Larraz, B., & Freitas, A. (2021). Local governments' use of social media during the COVID-19 pandemic: the case of Portugal. Government Information Quarterly, 38, (4), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2021.101620
- Pang, P., Cai, Q., Jiang, W., & Chan, K. (2021). Engagement of government social media on Facebook during the COVID-19 pandemic in Macao. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18, (7), https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18073508
- Perry, R. (2007). What is a disaster?. In: Handbook of Disaster Research. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-32353-4_1
- Petersen K., & Gerken, J. (2021). #Covid-19: An exploratory investigation of hashtag usage on Twitter. Health Policy, 125, (4), 541-547. doi: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2021.01.001.
- Rao, H., Vemprala, N., Akello, P., & Valecha, R. (2020). Retweets of officials’ alarming vs reassuring messages during the COVID-19 pandemic: implications for crisis management. International Journal of Information Management, 55, doi: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2020.102187
- Roshan, M., Warren, M., & Carr, R. (2016). Understanding the use of social media by organizations for crisis communication. Computers in Human Behavior, 63, 350-361. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.05.016
- Rufai, S., & Bunce, C, (2020). World leaders’ usage of Twitter in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: a content analysis. Journal of Public Health, 42, (3), 510-516. https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdaa049
- The Saudi Arabia National Unified Portal for Government Services, (2021). Retrieved from: (https://www.my.gov.sa).
- Shehata, A. (2021). Health Information behaviour during COVID-19 outbreak among Egyptian library and information science undergraduate students. Information Development, 37(3), 417-430. https://doi.org/10.1177/0266666920976181
- Statista. (2022). Leading countries based on number of Twitter users as of January 2022. Retrieved from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/242606/number-of-active-twitter-users-in-selected-countries/
- Sturges, D. (1994). Communicating through crisis: a strategy for organizational survival. Management Communication Quarterly, 7, (3), 297-316. doi:10.1177/0893318994007003004
- Sutton, J., Renshaw, S., & Butts, C. (2020). COVID-19: retransmission of official communications in an emerging pandemic. PLoS ONE, 15, (9), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238491
- Thelwall, M., & Thelwall, S. (2020). A thematic analysis of highly retweeted early COVID-19 tweets: consensus, information, dissent and lockdown life. Aslib Journal of Information Management, 72, (6), 945-962. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-05-2020-0134
- Tsao, S., Chen, H., Tisseverasinghe, T., Yang, Y., Li, L., & Butt, Z. (2021). What social media told us in the time of COVID-19: a scoping review. The Lancet, 3, (3), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2589-7500(20)30315-0
- Wang, Y., Hao, H., & Platt, L. (2021). Examining risk and crisis communications of government agencies and stakeholders during early-stages of COVID-19 on Twitter. Computers in Human Behavior, 114, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106568.
- Widt, D., & Panagiotopoulos, P. (2018). Informal networking in the public sector: mapping local government debates in a period of austerity. Government Information Quarterly, 35, (3), 375-388. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2018.05.004.
- Wukich, C. (2016). Government social media messages across disaster phases. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 24, (10), https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5973.12119
- Wukich, C., & Mergel, I. (2016). Reusing social media information in government. Government Information Quarterly, 33, (2), 305-312. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2016.01.011.
- Yin, R. (2017), “Case study research and applications: design and methods”. 6th ed. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.
- Zeemering, E. (2021). Functional fragmentation in city hall and Twitter communication during the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from Atlanta, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. Government Information Quarterly, 38, (1), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2020.101539
- Zheng, L., & Zheng, T. (2014). Innovation through social media in the public sector: information and interactions. Government Information Quarterly, 31, (1), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2014.01.011