The Multiplicity and Dynamics of Functional Crisis Memories in Crisis Communication: How Chinese Social Media Users Collectively Reconstructed SARS during COVID-19

ABSTRACT

By incorporating the concept of collective memory into the field of crisis communication, this study examined crisis memories (i.e., SARS memories) that were collectively constructed on social media to help make sense of and respond to an unfolding crisis (i.e., COVID-19). From a content analysis of 4,673 Weibo posts, along with a repost network analysis of these posts, various functional crisis memories constructed by multiple users (multiplicity) and in different stages (dynamics) were identified. Our findings provide a new perspective on crisis communication and management by including crisis memories as an extended part of multivocal crisis communication. We suggest that memory narratives surrounding similar past crises can be utilized as important information and resources in crisis communication, especially during public health crises with high uncertainty and widespread effects. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings for crisis communication are discussed.

通过将集体记忆这一概念纳入危机沟通领域, 本研究考察了在中国社交媒体上为了帮助人们更好理解和应对正在发生的危机 (即新冠肺炎疫情) 而集体构建的危机记忆 (即非典记忆) 。通过对4673个微博帖子的内容分析, 以及对这些帖子的转发网络分析, 本研究讨论了由不同用户类型在不同危机阶段共同构建的各类功能性危机记忆, 体现了其多样性和动态性。将危机记忆视为如今日渐融合多重声音的危机沟通的一个延伸部分, 本研究为危机沟通及其管理提供了一个新的视角, 即围绕过去相似危机的记忆叙述可以用作当下危机沟通中的重要信息和资源, 特别是在具有高度不确定性和广泛社会影响的突发公共卫生危机中。最后, 本研究探讨了危机记忆对于危机沟通的各种理论和实践意义。

KEYWORDS:

• Crisis communication
• crisis memory
• rhetorical arena theory
• crisis and emergency risk communication (CERC) model
• public health crisis
• social media

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Sina Weibo. 2020 Sina Weibo User Report. https://data.weibo.com/report/report

2. The variants of SARS including “非典”, “非典型肺炎” (atypical pneumonia in Chinese), and “严重急性呼吸综合征” (severe acute respiratory syndromes in Chinese).

3. American Association for Public Opinion Research. Margin of sampling error/credibility interval. https://www.aapor.org/Education-Resources/Election-Polling-Resources/Margin-of-Sampling-Error-Credibility-Interval.aspx

4. We only retained original posts for analysis and removed duplicate posts and reposts as practiced by other studies (Chen et al., 2020; González-Ibánez et al., 2011, June 19). In addition, we found that some posts may contain SARS-related hashtags or keywords as clickbaits to strategically attract online traffic, but they are not relevant to either SARS or COVID-19 outbreaks. An example of this kind of posts is: “#Novel Coronavirus multiplication duration is shorter than SARS# It is easy for two people to become lovers, but it is difficult to form a family. Because love alone cannot stay together for a lifetime, we need more things when we grow old together. Love is not an identity, but a responsibility.” The main part of this post is irrelevant to our research topic, although its keyword of “SARS” makes it included in our dataset.

5. See the Weibo open data instruction for user information details provided by Sina Weibo, https://open.weibo.com/wiki/2/users/show

6. We only provided Krippendorff’s alpha for crisis memory functions as the other two categories (i.e., crisis stages and user types) were not coded manually. First, for the crisis stages, each Weibo post was divided into one of the five stages by the date it was posted. Second, for the user types, each Weibo post’s creator was divided into one of the four user types based on the user information. Specifically, according to the User Type Status (UTS) contained in the user information, we categorized the users into four types: general public whose UTS is −1, the government whose UTS is 1, the media whose UTS is 0, 3, and 5, and influencers whose UTS is 0, 2, 4, 6, and 7.

7. China’s State Council. Fighting COVID-19: China in Action. June 7, 2020. http://english.www.gov.cn/news/topnews/202006/07/content_WS5edc559ac6d066592a449030.html

8. GT investigates: Review of 40-day response. Global Times. December 17, 2020. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1210178.shtml

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China [Grant No. 21CXW018].