Viral Communication Strategies: Facebook Posts and Citizen Engagement during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Trembovelskyi, Bohdan; Mabillard, Vincent

doi:10.2478/nispa-2025-0019

Abstract

Government communication is central for raising awareness about policy decisions and influencing citizen behaviour. Social media allows public authorities to involve the population in policy actions via interactive exchanges. This article investigates the link between vaccination-related posts published by government bodies in five Central and Eastern European states on Facebook and citizen engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic. It uses innovative topic modelling and clustering techniques and tests the association between content and engagement. Our study reveals significant differences in social-media engagement across various vaccination communication strategies on Facebook. We found that rational types of content—relying on facts and data—led to the highest levels of citizen engagement.

References

Angelov, D. (2020). Top2VEC: Distributed Representations of Topics. arXiv (Cornell University), https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2008.09470
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Badu, J., Kruke, B. L, & Saetren, G. B. (2023). Crisis Communication and Trustworthiness among Crisis Actors: towards a Typology of Crisis Management Difficulties. Safety in Extreme Environments, 5(2), 119–130. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42797-023-00074-8
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Boin, A., & Renaud, C. (2013). Orchestrating Joint Sensemaking across Government Levels: Challenges and Requirements for Crisis Leadership. Journal of Leadership Studies, 7(3), 41–46. https://doi.org/10.1002/jls.21296
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Bonsón, E., Royo, S., & Ratkai, M. (2015). Citizens’ Engagement on Local Governments’ Facebook Sites. An Empirical Analysis: The Impact of Different Media and Content Types in Western Europe. Government Information Quarterly, 32, 52-62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2014.11.001
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Britton, T., Ball, F., & Trapman, P. (2020). A Mathematical Model Reveals the Influence of Population Heterogeneity on Herd Immunity to SARS-CoV-2. Science, 369(6505), 846-849. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abc6810
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Canel, M. J., & Luoma-Aho, V. (2018). Public Sector Communication: Closing Gaps Between Citizens and Public Organizations. John Wiley & Sons.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Cernicova-Buca, M., & Palea, A. (2021). An Appraisal of Communication Practices Demonstrated by Romanian District Public Health Authorities at the Outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Sustainability, 13(5), 2500. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13052500
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Chen, Q., Min, C., Zhang, W., Ma, X., & Evans, R. (2021). Factors Driving Citizen Engagement with Government TikTok Accounts During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Model development and analysis. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 23(2), e21463. https://doi.org/10.2196/21463
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Chen, Q., Min, C., Zhang, W., Wang, G., Ma, X., & Evans, R. (2020). Unpacking the Black Box: How to Promote Citizen Engagement through Government Social Media during the COVID-19 Crisis. Computers in Human Behavior, 110, 106380. https://doi.org/10.1016/jchb.2020.106380
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Coelho, R. L. F., De Oliveira, D. S., & De Almeida, M. I. S. (2016). Does Social Media Matter for Post Typology? Impact of Post Content on Facebook and Instagram Metrics. Online Information Review, 40(4), 458–471. https://doi.org/10.1108/oir-06-2015-0176
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Coombs, W. T. (2014). State of Crisis Communication: Evidence and the Bleeding Edge. Research Journal of the Institute for Public Relations, 1(1), 1–12. https://instituteforpr.org/wp-content/uploads/CoombsFinalWES.pdf
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Cvijikj, I. P., & Michahelles, F. (2013). Online Engagement Factors on Facebook Brand Pages. Social Network Analysis and Mining, 3(4), 843-861. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-013-0098-8
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
DePaula, N., Dincelli, E., & Harrison, T. M. (2017). Toward a Typology of Government Social Media Communication: Democratic Goals, Symbolic Acts and Self-presentation. Government Information Quarterly, 35(1), 98–108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2017.10.003
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Dolan, R., Conduit, J., & Fahy, J. (2015). Social media engagement: a construct of positively and negatively valenced engagement behaviours. In R. J. Brodie, L. D. Hollebeek, & J. Conduit (Eds.), Customer engagement: Contemporary issues and challenges (1st ed., pp. 102–123). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315725185
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Dolan, R., Conduit, J., Frethey-Bentham, C., Fahy, J., & Goodman, S. (2019). Social Media Engagement Behavior: A framework for Engaging Customers through Social Media Content. European Journal of Marketing, 53(10), 2213–2243. https://doi.org/10.1108/ejm-03-2017-0182
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Falco, E., & Kleinhans, R. (2018). Beyond Technology: Identifying Local Government Challenges for Using Digital Platforms for Citizen Engagement. International Journal of Information Management, 40, 17–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2018.01.007
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Fissi, S., Gori, E., & Romolini, A. (2022). Social Media Government Communication and Stakeholder Engagement in the Era of Covid-19: Evidence from Italy. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 35(3), 276-293. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijpsm-06-2021-0145
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Gherheş, V., Cernicova-Buca, M., & Fărcaşiu, M. A. (2023). Public Engagement with Romanian Government Social Media Accounts during the COVID-19 Pandemic. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(3), 2372. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20032372
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Grootendorst, M. (2022). BERTopic: Neural Topic Modeling with a Class-based TF-IDF Procedure. arXiv (Cornell University), https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2203.05794
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Haro-De-Rosario, A., Sáez-Martín, A., & Del Carmen Caba-Pérez, M. (2016). Using Social Media to Enhance Citizen Engagement with Local Government: Twitter or Facebook? New Media & Society, 20(1), 29–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816645652
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Hofmann, S., Beverungen, D., Räckers, M., & Becker, J. (2013). What makes local governments’ online communications successful? Insights from a multi-method analysis of Facebook. Government Information Quarterly, 30(4), 387-396. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2013.04.002
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Islm, T., Meng, H., Pitafi, A. H., Zafar, A. U., Sheikh, Z., Mubarik, M. S., & Liang, X. (2021). Why DO Citizens Engage in Government Social Media Accounts during COVID-19 Pandemic? A Comparative Study. Telematics and Informatics, 62, 101619. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2021.101619
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Jandrić, P. (2020). Postdigital Research in the Time of COVID-19. Postdigital Science and Education, 2(2), 233-238. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00113-8
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Jin, Y., Liu, B. F., & Austin, L. L. (2011). 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, 41(1), 74-94. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650211423918
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Kankanamge, N., Yigitcanlar, T., & Goonetilleke, A. (2020). How engaging are disaster management related social media channels? The case of Australian state emergency organisations. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 48, 101571. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101571
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Katz, E., Blumler, J. G., & Gurevitch, M. (1973). Uses and Gratifications Research. Public Opinion Quarterly, 37(4), 509. https://doi.org/10.1086/268109
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Kim, H. M., Saffer, A. J., Liu, W., Sun, J., Li, Y., Zhen, L., & Yang, A. (2021). How Public Health Agencies Break through COVID-19 Conversations: A Strategic Network Approach to Public Engagement. Health Communication, 37(10), 1276–1284. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2021.1886393
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Lazarus, J. V., Ratzan, S. C., Palayew, A., Gostin, L. O., Larson, H. J., Rabin, K., Kimball, S., & El-Mohandes, A. (2021). A global Survey of Potential Acceptance of a COVID-19 Vaccine. Nature Medicine, 27(2), 225–228. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-1124-9
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Lee, S. Y. (2016). Weathering the Crisis: Effects of Stealing Thunder in Crisis Communication. Public Relations Review, 42(2), 336-344. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2016.02.005
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Lee, S. Y. (2020). Stealing Thunder as a Crisis Communication Strategy in the Digital Age. Business Horizons, 63(6), 801-810. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2020.07.006
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Limaye, R. J., Sauer, M., Ali, J., Bernstein, J., Wahl, B., Barnhill, A., & Labrique, A. (2020). Building Trust While Influencing Online COVID-19 Content in the Social Media World. The Lancet Digital Health, 2(6), e277–e278. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2589-7500(20)30084-4
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Lovari, A. (2020). Spreading (Dis)Trust: COVID-19 Misinformation and Government Intervention in Italy. Media and Communication, 8(2), 458-461. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v8i2.3219
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Lovari, A., & Mazzei, A. (2015). When the press Office goes social. The role of Social Media Policies for Media Relations Strategies in PSOS. 22nd International Public Relations Research Symposium BledCom. Ljubljana, Slovenia. https://apeiron.iulm.it/handle/10808/20907
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Lovari, A., & Valentini, C. (2020). PSOs in an Era of Social Media. In The Role of Social Media in Today’s Global Communications.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Massey, D., Huang, C., Lu, Y., Cohen, A., Oren, Y., Moed, T., Matzner, P., Mahajan, S., Caraballo, C., Kumar, N., Xue, Y., Ding, Q., Dreyer, R., Roy, B., & Krumholz, H. (2021). Engagement With COVID-19 Public Health Measures in the United States: A Cross-sectional Social Media Analysis from June to November 2020. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 23(6), e26655. https://doi.org/10.2196/26655
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Mclnnes, L., Healy, J., & Astels, S. (2017). hdbscan: Hierarchical Density Based Clustering. The Journal of Open Source Software, 2(11), 205. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.00205
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Mclnnes, L., Healy, J., & Melville, J. (2018). UMAP: Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection for Dimension Reduction. arXiv (Cornell University). https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1802.03426
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Moran, G., Muzellec, L., & Johnson, D. (2019). Message Content Features and Social Media Engagement: Evidence from the Media Industry. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 29(5), 533–545. https://doi.org/10.1108/jpbm-09-2018-2014
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Neely, S. R., & Collins, M. (2018). Social Media and Crisis Communications: A Surveyor Local Governments in Florida. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 15(1). https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsem-2016-0067
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Ngai, C. S. B., Singh, R. G., Lu, W., & Koon, A. C. (2020). Grappling with the COVID-19 Health Crisis: Content Analysis of Communication Strategies and their Effects on Public Engagement on Social Media. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(8), e21360. https://doi.org/10.2196/21360
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Obregon, R., Mosquera, M., Tomsa, S., & Chitnis, K. (2020). Vaccine Hesitancy and Demand for Immunization in Eastern Europe and Central Asia: Implications for the Region and Beyond. Journal of Health Communication, 25(10), 808-815. https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2021.1879366
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Pang, P. C., & Liu, L. (2020). Why do Consumers Review Doctors Online? Topic Modeling Analysis of Positive and Negative Reviews on an Online Health Community in China. Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. https://doi.org/10.24251/hicss.2020.087
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Pang, P. C., Cai, Q., Jiang, W., & Chan, K. S. (2021). Engagement of Government Social Media on Facebook during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Macao. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(7), 3508. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18073508
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Paiva Dias, G. (2022). Local governments on Facebook: What content encourages citizen participation and what type of municipalities post it the most? In L. Amaral, D. Soares, L. Zheng, M. Peixoto, & C. Braga (Eds.), Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV ’22) (pp. 242-247). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3560107.3560147
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Popa, A. D., Enache, A. L, Popa, I. V., Antoniu, S. A., Dragomir, R. A., & Burlacu, A. (2022). Determinants of the Hesitancy toward COVID-19 Vaccination in Eastern European Countries and the Relationship with Health and Vaccine Literacy: A Literature Review. Vaccines, 10(5), 672. https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines10050672
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Reddick, C. G., Takeoka Chatfield, A., & Ojo, A. (2017). A social media text analytics framework for double-loop learning for citizen-centric public services: A case study of a local government Facebook use. Government Information Quarterly, 34(1), 110-125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2016.11.001
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Reveilhac, M., Steinmetz, S., & Morselli, D. (2022). A systematic literature review of how and whether social media data can complement traditional survey data to study public opinion. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 81, 10107-10142. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-022-12101-0
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Reyes-Menendez, A., Saura, J. R., & Filipe, F. (2019). The Importance of Behavioral Data to Identify Online Fake Reviews for Tourism Businesses: A Systematic Review. PeerJ Computer Science, 5, e219. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.219
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Shahbaznezhad, H., Dolan, R., & Rashidirad, M. (2021). The Role of Social Media Content Format and Platform in Users’ Engagement Behavior. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 53(1), 47-65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intmar.2020.05.001
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Solis, B., & Breakenridge, D. (2009). Putting the Public back in Public Relations: How Social Media is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR (1st ed.). FT Press.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Tafesse, W. (2015). Content Strategies and Audience Response on Facebook Brand Pages. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 33(6), 927-943. https://doi.org/10.1108/mip-07-2014-0135
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Wukich, C. (2016). Government Social Media Messages across Disaster Phases. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 24(4), 230-243. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5973.12119
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Wukich, C. (2020). Government Social Media Engagement Strategies and Public Roles. Public Performance & Management Review, 44(1), 187-215. https://doi.org/10.1080/15309576.2020.1851266
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Yavetz, G., & Bronstein, J. (2023). Cities under fire: Crisis communication on home front versus frontline cities’ Facebook pages during operation ‘guardian of the walls’. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 31(3), 421-430. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5973.12448
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Zhou, A., Liu, W., Kim, H. M., Lee, E., Shin, J., Zhang, Y., Huang-Isherwood, K. M., Dong, C., & Yang, A. (2024). Moral Foundations, Ideological Divide, and Public Engagement with U.S. Government Agencies’ COVID-19 Vaccine Communication on Social Media. Mass Communication & Society, 27(4), 739-764. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2022.2151919
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Zumofen, R., Mabillard, V., & Pasquier, M. (2023). Social media use in Central and Eastern European cities: Defining local government-citizen relationships through phases. NISPAcee Journal of Public Administration and Policy, 16(1), 232-253. 10.2478/nispa-2025-0020
Search in Google Scholar Back to article

Viral Communication Strategies: Facebook Posts and Citizen Engagement during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Paradigm

My account