Social Media Use for Pandemic Preparedness and Response

Social media plays a significant role in public health communication. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the public turned to government and allied government groups for health guidance, much of which was provided and amplified using social media-based strategies.

This project involved three key initiatives related to social media use for pandemic preparedness and response. The first initiative aimed to understand the experiences of government and allied government communicators who shared information using social media throughout the pandemic. This was done to identify challenges faced and opportunities to improve support for future work. The second initiative involved convening government health communications leads from BC’s Health Authorities to explore the creation of a Community of Practice to support health and emergency preparedness communications. The third initiative focused on developing a series of training videos and infographics on social media communications for government and allied government professionals. These materials included topics such as misinformation, managing online harassment, moderating content, using storytelling, risk communication best practices, hooking an audience, communicating numbers, developing effective visuals, and social media functionality

In April 2023, PIPPS researchers released a report synthesizing findings from a CIHR-funded project. The report outlines four key recommendations from 25 workshop participants: increasing opportunities for social media skills-based training, increasing mental health support for staff on the frontlines of social media, improving intra-organizational communication and engagement, and supporting the creation of a formal Community of Practice.

To directly address the needs emerging from this workshop report, Kaylee Byers, Rackeb Tesfaye, Ryan Yazdani and Gladys We collaborated with social media experts to create a workshop series, including:

• Introduction to Social Media Functionality

• How to Hook and Engage Audiences on Social Media

•  Telling Your Science Story

• Data Visualization

• Social Media Moderation

• Tackling Misinformation

• Risk Communication

• Health Communication and Online Abuse

• Communicating Science Visually

In early 2024, the nine videos and accompanying infographics were sent to employees of government and allied-government organizations and made publicly available on PIPPS’ YouTube channel. 

PIPPS Team: Kaylee Byers, Anne-Marie Nicol, Rackeb Tesfaye, Gladys We, Julia Lukacs, Ryan Yazdani, Aline Farina

Partners: SSHRC; CIHR, Science Up First, Centre for Democratic Institutions, Designs That Cell, the Canadian Network for Monitoring Infectious Diseases, Pacific Public Health Foundation

Resources