Risk Communication of COVID-19 Conducted by Experts and its Acceptance on Twitter(X)

Abstract

With the development of social media, experts are now communicating directly with audiences through social networking services. During the spread of COVID-19 in Japan, infectious disease experts actively conveyed the latest findings and engaged in risk communication on Twitter (X). In this study, we use two methods of analysis: content analysis and network analysis. First, Latent Semantic Scaling will be used to select "uncivil" and "civil" seed words to identify audiences’ reactions to the content transmitted by the experts. Then, we will analyze the reply tree of communication and look for communication methods that are acceptable to the audiences in different combinations of "personal, organizational, official, and communicative" in the process of risk communication. Furthermore, network analysis will be used to determine the role of experts in SNS. Finally, it is expected to propose guidelines for social risk communication to experts when faced with an unexpected situation such as COVID-19.