Social Media Users' Engagement with Fear Appeal Elements in Government's Health Crisis Communication via State-Owned Media.

Government health messaging is significant to the containment of public health crises. Such communication may benefit from using fear appeal, a message strategy for promoting health and preventing diseases. Yet little scholarly attention has been paid to how fear appeal is employed in government messaging to promote social media engagement through online actions including likes, shares, and comments.

Impact of COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation on Social Media Virality: Content Analysis of Message Themes and Writing Strategies.

Background: Vaccines serve an integral role in containing pandemics, yet vaccine hesitancy is prevalent globally. One key reason for this hesitancy is the pervasiveness of misinformation on social media. Although considerable research attention has been drawn to how exposure to misinformation is closely associated with vaccine hesitancy, little scholarly attention has been given to the investigation or robust theorizing of the various content themes pertaining to antivaccine misinformation about COVID-19 and the writing strategies in which these content themes are manifested.

Exploring the Relationship Between Trust-Building Strategies and Public Engagement on Social Media During the COVID-19 Outbreak.

Communication is critical in a new health emergency because it motivates the public to take preventive actions. Prior research has shown that strategies including source credibility, information transparency and uncertainty reduction actions could enhance trust in health communication on social media. Yet research on how the government in China used these trust-building strategies to engage the public during the outbreak of COVID-19 is limited.

Exploring drivers for public engagement in social media communication with medical social influencers in China.

Social networking sites offer an important means for increasing the accessibility and enabling new forms of health communication between the public and medical social influencers (MSIs). MSIs have a social presence and are perceived as a credible source of health-related information. A research gap, however, exists in understanding the communication strategies employed by MSIs and the factors driving the public to engage in health communication with MSIs.

Grappling With the COVID-19 Health Crisis: Content Analysis of Communication Strategies and Their Effects on Public Engagement on Social Media.

Background: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has posed an unprecedented challenge to governments worldwide. Effective government communication of COVID-19 information with the public is of crucial importance.

Objective: We investigate how the most-read state-owned newspaper in China, People's Daily, used an online social networking site, Sina Weibo, to communicate about COVID-19 and whether this could engage the public.

Relationship between persuasive metadiscoursal devices in research article abstracts and their attention on social media.

Research article abstracts often convince readers that the article is worth reading. Therefore, they rely not only on the quality of arguments or novelty of findings to persuade readers but also linguistic markers in the form of metadiscourse to assert a position on an issue, increase readability of a text, engage readers, and avoid objection to the writer's interpretations, thereby enhancing the credibility of the text. Given that research article abstracts are often published online and their newsworthiness would affect whether they would be ultimately read, Altmetric.

A discourse analysis of the macro-structure, metadiscoursal and microdiscoursal features in the abstracts of research articles across multiple science disciplines.

The abstract of a scientific research article convinces readers that the article deserves to be read. Abstracts can also determine the success of publications and grant applications. In recent years, there has been a trend of cross-disciplinary collaborations in the science community.