Citizen Engagement through Government and Official Social Media Platforms during the COVID-19 Crisis: A case study of the CDC

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the world's people, economy, and countries. After being first reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, COVID-19 had infected 31 million people in the United States and 135,646,617 around the world by the end of March 2021 (World Health Organization, 2021). During a crisis such as COVID-19, people tend to widely use and depend on social media as their first source of information (Saroj & Pal, 2020), and audiences tend to build their knowledge and understanding of the crisis through government and official sources (Zhang et al., 2019). Having acknowledged that, governments have shifted their use of social media platforms from spreading propaganda to the transfer of information and communication with the public (Bonson et al., 2019).

Author

• Mohammed Huraysi, University of North Texas