Characterizing the role of Weibo and WeChat in sharing original information in a crisis

Abstract

Strategically differentiated managerial evidence of different social media platforms is of great importance to enhance crisis communication processes by balancing their strengths and weaknesses. This study aims to uncover the platform-specific situational information-sharing characteristics by differentiating the major types of information published in Weibo and WeChat during different phases of a crisis. The subject of the study is the Changsheng fake vaccine crisis which happened in China in 2018. Multiple supervised machine learning and topic modelling methods are used for the characterization of situational information types of the crisis during three phases in both platforms. Our study found that WeChat shares more situational information such as notifications, caution and advice, and criticizing information, whereas Weibo shares more emotional support and help-seeking information. This study provides social media analytics and empirical evidence of platform-specific situational information-sharing characteristics to aid authorities/researchers for better crisis communication and public emergency management.