Main Article Content
Abstract
The outbreak of COVID-19 has dented the global public health profile. On the one side, the ubiquity of social media has led to damaging misinformation, fake news, stigmatization, and conspiracy theories. Fortunately, on the other side, the advantageous characteristics of social media and the informational support mechanisms with which they produce social safety valves; are a solid basis to curbing the pandemic. This paper examines the use of social media as a valuable platform to publicly communicate the COVID-19, especially its scientific discourses. This paper focuses on Facebook as a platform amenable to the strategic digital
communication of COVID-19. It takes illustrations from screenshots of Facebook users in Nigeria and Bangladesh. Some of the identified strategies include supporting for preventive measures, focusing on solutions, countering fake information, standing against racism and
stigmatization, relying on scientific facts, confronting conspiracy theories, dealing with pseudoscience and denials, explaining statistics meaningfully, avoiding the temptation to trivialize and sensationalize, and using local languages.
Keywords: social media strategies, science communication, social support, COVID-19 pandemic.
Article Details
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).