JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

In recent years, sudden public health incidents that pose a serious threat to public life have occurred frequently in China. The use of social media by public health authorities has helped to reduce these threats by increasing effective risk communication between the government and the public.

Objective:

The objective of this study was to reveal how the Chinese CDC uses social media to improve three aspects of health communication between the government and the public: adoption, operation and interaction.

Methods:

To analyze the 134 CDC's government Weibo accounts at the provincial and prefecture-level administration regions in mainland China, we collected their account data and extracted 1215 Weibo tweets. we also supplemented the data to reveal the overall performance of CDC's government Weibo usage during the COVID-19 crisis.

Results:

The registration rate of the CDC's government Weibo accounts has increased year by year, and the local authorities had registered Weibo accounts before the central government authorities did. In total, 29.8% of the CDC facilities have registered an account, and among the CDC facilities that have registered Weibo accounts, the registration rate in the eastern region (50.7%) is higher than those in the central region (22.4%) and the western region (26.9%). Nearly 90% of these Weibo accounts have official certification, but there are dropouts in the specific operating process. One-third of the accounts have not been updated for more than one year, and the number of Weibo followers is polarized, with a maximum and minimum difference of one million. The response rate to users’ comments is less than 1%. Emergency information, multimedia content and original content are more helpful in promoting communication between the government and the public. Such interaction was partially improved during the COVID-19 pandemic. The CDC updated the daily epidemic situation and provided popular science information for epidemic prevention and control for the public in a timely manner.

Conclusions:

China’s CDC is using more social media to popularize daily health information and has taken the first step to improve communication between the government and the public. However, equal dialogue, two-way interactions and effective communication with the public still need improvement.