Abstract
Social media communication is integral to framing an effective crisis response but is generally impacted by high volumes and an overload of information and misinformation, i.e., infodemic conditions. The social media connection content (i.e., information) and connection type (i.e., communications strategies) that are shared between actors (e.g., emergency response organisations and the public) underpins the development of trusted shared situational awareness for effective crisis management. This study investigates how local public health organisations use Facebook to mitigate COVID-19 misinformation and create effective trusted shared situational awareness. We show how the nature of the event and social media temporal characteristics can create information objective-subjective tensions and create misinformation on public health social media channels. This undermines an agreed and accurate representation of reality that is expected of trusted, shared situational awareness. We conclude that developing communications strategies to manage information objective-subjective tensions becomes especially important during an evolving crisis scenario where situational awareness and knowledge are developed over time and information and advice may change in response to a changing crisis conditions.
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Notes
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WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at Munich Security Conference, 15 February 2020.
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Melissa Fleming is Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, taking up her functions as of 1 September 2019.
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1) the cause and origin of the virus and disease; 2) the symptoms and patterns of transmission; 3) the treatments, prophylactics, and cures that are available; and 4) the effectiveness and impact of interventions by health authorities or other institutions.
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Bunker, D., Shahbazi, M., Ehnis, C., Sorrell, T.C. (2022). As Time Goes By: Temporal Characteristics of Social Media and Information Objective-Subjective Tensions in Crisis Communication. In: Elbanna, A., McLoughlin, S., Dwivedi, Y.K., Donnellan, B., Wastell, D. (eds) Co-creating for Context in the Transfer and Diffusion of IT. TDIT 2022. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 660. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17968-6_20
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