What triggers online help-seeking retransmission during the COVID-19 period? Empirical evidence from Chinese social media

PLoS One. 2020 Nov 3;15(11):e0241465. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0241465. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

The past nine months witnessed COVID-19's fast-spreading at the global level. Limited by medical resources shortage and uneven facilities distribution, online help-seeking becomes an essential approach to cope with public health emergencies for many ordinaries. This study explores the driving forces behind the retransmission of online help-seeking posts. We built an analytical framework that emphasized content characteristics, including information completeness, proximity, support seeking type, disease severity, and emotion of help-seeking messages. A quantitative content analysis was conducted with a probability sample consisting of 727 posts. The results illustrate the importance of individual information completeness, high proximity, instrumental support seeking. This study also demonstrates slight inconformity with the severity principle but stresses the power of anger in help-seeking messages dissemination. As one of the first online help-seeking diffusion analyses in the COVID-19 period, our research provides a reference for constructing compelling and effective help-seeking posts during a particular period. It also reveals further possibilities for harnessing social media's power to promote reciprocal and cooperative actions as a response to this deepening global concern.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Asian People
  • COVID-19
  • China / epidemiology
  • Coronavirus Infections / epidemiology*
  • Coronavirus Infections / psychology*
  • Disease Outbreaks
  • Emergencies / psychology
  • Humans
  • Information Dissemination*
  • Information Seeking Behavior*
  • Online Systems*
  • Pandemics*
  • Pneumonia, Viral / epidemiology*
  • Pneumonia, Viral / psychology*
  • Public Health
  • Social Media*
  • Social Support*

Grants and funding

This study is supported by the Science Popularization and Risk Communication of Transgenic Biotechnologies Project (Grant code: 2016ZX08015002) to CL and AC, China Scholarship (Grant code: 201906210115) to CL, the 25th department funding of USTC (Grant code: DA2110251001) to AC, 2019 New Humanities Funding of USTC (Grant code: YD2110002015) to AC. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or manuscript preparation.