Under the shadow of COVID-19, social distancing measures resulted in the cancellation of group recreational activities at all levels, many businesses were forced to close and others have had to require their employees to work from home: the world found itself stuck at home and our use of digital technology has spiked massively as a result, with both positive and negative consequences.
And as more and more social interactions move online, the conversation around COVID-19 has continued to expand, with communications researchers from Australia, the United State of America and China reporting that growing numbers are turning to social media for both information and company.
For example, the authors of #COVID-19: The First Public Coronavirus Twitter Dataset[1], collected some 50 million tweets about the pandemic from 28 January until 16 March 2020.
Positively, platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have become central to the technological and social infrastructure that allows us to stay connected during lockdown[2], with social media providing valuable emotional support during a crisis by enabling people to virtually band together, share information and demand action to perceived problems[3].
And we saw signs of that uptake right here in the Archdiocese of Perth.
Identitywa, the Catholic agency which provides accommodation and community activities for some of Perth’s most vulnerable people, those with physical or mental disabilities that prevent them from taking part in society independently, reported that the uptake of social media and other digital communications platforms played a crucial role in maintaining relationships for housemates.
“Given the challenge of being in isolation and how it can affect people emotionally, we have worked to provide a variety of additional resources in our houses for housemates to use, including activities and games, arts and craft, the opportunity to access smart technology and the latest offerings in communication,” said Identitywa’s CEO, Ms Marina Re.
“The opportunity for people to use communication technology such as FaceTime, Telehealth, Skype and Zoom has been a wonderful success and it is definitely something that will continue to be used in the future.”
Similarly, the Archdiocese streamed weekly and daily Masses for the Catholic community with positive results, allowing people to stay connected with their faith, with parishes across WA working to bring their content and services online.
However, despite many such beneficial uses, misinformation can also spread on social media and “can actually heighten peoples’ perceived risk and fear about health-related topics [4] .”
The University of California has been conducting current research on the negative health-related impacts of information about COVID-19 being spread through social media (as an alternative to traditional media sources) and their research shows that the Achilles heel of information sourced via social media is its ambiguous nature[5] .
That is in general, we don’t trust news content from social media – and as our emotional response to COVID-19 increases along with the frequency of social media content about it, our ability to filter out information that isn’t true decreases: and further, we are more likely to share this incorrect piece of information as part of that emotional response.
This is exacerbated by the fact that peoples’ faith in traditional sources of news are also diminished[6], leaving them even more reliant on ‘ambiguous’ social media content.
And concerning, the prolonged effect of such heightened concern and exposure can lead to a downward spiral in terms of mental health.
In their paper The Novel Coronavirus (COVID-2019) Outbreak: Amplification of Health Consequences by Media Exposure [7], the authors state that, “these phenomena are particularly relevant to the COVID-2019 outbreak, as people tend to perceive novel viral threats as higher in risk compared to more common threats such as influenza.”
In addition, their research reports that beyond the purely mental health effects from the increased stress, “media-fuelled (including social media) distress placed unnecessary strain on emergency departments and other health care facilities as they dealt with an influx of worried people, even in communities that were not experiencing an increase in the incidence of the disease[8].”
Another major problem caused by media-driven stress about the epidemic was the surge in panic buying of specific goods, which in turn led to extra stress for everyone affected as well as posing other significant health risks.
“The COVID-2019 outbreak of consumer hoarding of facemasks has led to a global shortage of facemasks and respirators, which are critical to protecting those at high risk – particularly health care professionals performing routine and specialized care,” state Garfin and her peers[9].
This shortage is still jeopardising lives.
And it’s not just healthcare professionals who were hurt by such a response: panic buying of essential consumer items like toilet paper, first aid kits, bottled water, and hand sanitizer in response to COVID-19 “led to global shortages and price gouging of important necessities[10].”
- Emily Chen, Kristina Lerman, Emilio Ferrara, 2020. #COVID-19: The First Public Coronavirus Twitter Dataset. University of Southern California, Information Sciences Institute, CA, USA.
- Leysia Palen and Kenneth M. Anderson. 2016, Crisis informatics—New data for extraordinary times: Focus on behaviours, not on fetishizing social media tools; SCIENCEMAG, Vol. 353, p224. Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA.
- Yan Jin, Brooke Fisher Liu, and Lucinda L. Austin, 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, Vol. 41, p 74 – 94. SAGE Publications, USA.
- Dana Rose Garfin, Roxane Cohen Silver, and E. Alison Holman, 2020. The Novel Coronavirus (COVID-2019) Outbreak: Amplification of Health Consequences by Media Exposure; Health Psychology, Vol. 39, No. 5, 355–357. University of California, Irvine, USA.
- Dana Rose Garfin, Roxane Cohen Silver, and E. Alison Holman, 2020. The Novel Coronavirus (COVID-2019) Outbreak: Amplification of Health Consequences by Media Exposure; Health Psychology, Vol. 39, No. 5, 355–357. University of California, Irvine, USA.
- Yan Jin, Brooke Fisher Liu, and Lucinda L. Austin, 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, Vol. 41, p 74 – 94. SAGE Publications, USA.
[7] Dana Rose Garfin, Roxane Cohen Silver, and E. Alison Holman, 2020. The Novel Coronavirus (COVID-2019) Outbreak: Amplification of Health Consequences by Media Exposure; Health Psychology, Vol. 39, No. 5, 355–357. University of California, Irvine, USA.
[8] Dana Rose Garfin, Roxane Cohen Silver, and E. Alison Holman, 2020. The Novel Coronavirus (COVID-2019) Outbreak: Amplification of Health Consequences by Media Exposure; Health Psychology, Vol. 39, No. 5, 355–357. University of California, Irvine, USA.
[9] Dana Rose Garfin, Roxane Cohen Silver, and E. Alison Holman, 2020. The Novel Coronavirus (COVID-2019) Outbreak: Amplification of Health Consequences by Media Exposure; Health Psychology, Vol. 39, No. 5, 355–357. University of California, Irvine, USA.
[10] Dana Rose Garfin, Roxane Cohen Silver, and E. Alison Holman, 2020. The Novel Coronavirus (COVID-2019) Outbreak: Amplification of Health Consequences by Media Exposure; Health Psychology, Vol. 39, No. 5, 355–357. University of California, Irvine, USA.
- Emily Chen, Kristina Lerman, Emilio Ferrara, 2020. #COVID-19: The First Public Coronavirus Twitter Dataset. University of Southern California, Information Sciences Institute, CA, USA.
- Dana Rose Garfin, Roxane Cohen Silver, and E. Alison Holman, 2020. The Novel Coronavirus (COVID-2019) Outbreak: Amplification of Health Consequences by Media Exposure; Health Psychology, Vol. 39, No. 5, 355–357. University of California, Irvine, USA.
- Yan Jin, Brooke Fisher Liu, and Lucinda L. Austin, 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, Vol. 41, p 74 – 94. SAGE Publications, USA.
- Yury Kryvasheyeu, Haohui Chen, Nick Obradovich, Esteban Moro, Pascal Van Hentenryck, James Fowler, Manuel Cebrian, 2016. Rapid assessment of disaster damage using social media activity: Disaster Management; SCIENCEMAG, National Information and Communications Technology Australia, Melbourne, Victoria.
- Lifang Li, Qingpeng Zhang, Xiao Wang, Jun Zhang, Tao Wang, Tian-Lu Gao, Wei Duan, Kelvin Kam-fai Tsoi, and Fei-Yue Wang, 2020. Characterizing the Propagation of Situational Information in Social Media During COVID-19 Epidemic: A Case Study on Weibo; IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems, Vol. 7, No. 2. China.
- Leysia Palen and Kenneth M. Anderson. 2016, Crisis informatics—New data for extraordinary times: Focus on behaviours, not on fetishizing social media tools; SCIENCEMAG, Vol. 353, p224. Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA.
From pages 18 – 19 of Issue 25: Crises and Trauma of The Record Magazine