posted updates about daily cases, as well as guidance and instructions. They would tell the public when places were put in lockdown, let people know what was happening and why. It went from the overarching scale of the province to local events, asking people to follow guidance or reminding them of restrictions and providing reassurance. We looked at both perceived and received emotional support in these posts. The former emphasises the availability of support from the government accounts, and the latter how it is received by the public. Emotional support is established if members of the public perceive it in the post content and become actively involved in providing feedback. The more emotional support that is received, the higher the public engagement. THE RIGHT KINDOF SUPPORT The translation of emotional support is not automatic. It is affected by the frequency of posts and the stage of the pandemic in which they are produced. Oversupply can lead to an ‘infodemic’, adding to the spread of fear and anxiety. To measure the received support, we looked at message interaction. On social media, when an individual receives support, they are more likely to engage with posts, in the form of likes, shares or comments. We found that as the pandemic developed, the number of posts increased accordingly then decreased only slightly, remaining higher than prepandemic levels before jumping again with the start of the new wave. The outbreak prompted governments to move towards emotional support provision, and this weakened as the pandemic was gradually brought under control. The need for support was especially true at the beginning of the pandemic, when everything was unknown or uncertain. This was a time of strict lockdowns. People were locked down wherever they were when they were announced, with no notice or time to prepare. You could be stuck at work, away from families, with near-complete strangers. People have had to sleep in their offices and work there as well – there was no going home. The public need information and guidance from the government so they can feel more safe or secure, and because the lockdowns were swift and decisive, the emotional support was more important. The government tried to make sure that the public understand the policy, while minimising any unnecessary panic. The relationship between perceived and received support is positive from the stage where domestic cases dropped and initially during the success in containing the virus in Wuhan and Hubei. Then followed a negative relationship, suggesting that the increase in quantity of perceived support alone does not lead to an increase in public activity. We find a significant negative relationship between emotional support frequency and public activity. In particular, our study found that daily posts had a significant negative impact on the public’s received support. This aligns with concerns over information overload which were widely apparent on social media throughout the pandemic. Likewise, the abuse of emotional support provision may strengthen anxiety and other affective disorders, potentially even stifling the positive influence of emotional support provided by government. During the first stage, everything was unknown, so the public desperately wanted information. Later, things calmed down, and the public can become more sensitive to information overload. Then, they feel that they are not gaining emotional support but rather being made to feel anxious because there can be so much misleading information out there. Secondly, for some individuals, this type of emotional support did not come automatically – there needs to be guidance through, for instance, the wording of the posts, the way the post is being shared, or even the timing of the post. There are a lot of things associated with both informational and emotional support. A NEED FOR STRATEGY These findings show that government agencies attempting to enhance public health through emotional support need to match their interventions with the development of the pandemic. The next step is for us to investigate more in-depth how this emotional support can be better measured and realised through a better strategy. At the time of writing, China is racing to contain renewed outbreaks. That gives us another window to examine what is happening, and should aid us in finding the strategy that works best, allowing social media to fulfil its potential of providing valuable emotional support. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 49 Dr Ruilin Zhu is a Lecturer in Information Systems in the Department of Management Science. His is also Director of the MSc Management programme. Dr Zhu is one of the authors of the paper Understanding the impact of emotional support on mental health resilience of the community in the social media in Covid-19 pandemic, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders. ruilin.zhu@lancaster.ac.uk
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