The Impact of Comment Slant and Comment Tone on Digital Health Communication Among Polarized Publics: A Web-Based Survey Experiment.

Background: Public attitudes toward health issues are becoming increasingly polarized, as seen in social media comments, which vary from supportive to oppositional and frequently include uncivil language. The combined effects of comment slant and comment tone on health behavior among a polarized public need further examination.

Objective: This study aims to examine how social media users' prior attitudes toward mask wearing and their exposure to a mask-wearing-promoting post, synchronized with polarized and hostile discussions, affect their compliance with mask wearing.

Bottom-up actions: Examining perceived influence of pandemic news, information relevance, perceived media credibility, and pro-community participation.

Objective: When hyper-infectious diseases sweep over the world, pro-community participation has been found to effectively curb the spread of viruses. This study explores the associations among media-related perceptions and media users' pro-community participation during the peak of the 2022 COVID-19 outbreaks in China.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 976 Chinese media users in April 2022 to collect data on their pro-community participation and perceptions of pandemic news influence, information relevance, and credibility of traditional media and social media.