The Effects of Ephemeral Social Media on COVID-19 Prevention Measures
Journal
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Journal Volume
14024 LNCS
Pages
366-379
ISBN
9783031359453
Date Issued
2023-01-01
Author(s)
Abstract
As Instagram Stories feature launched in the recent past, a few prior studies were discussing the use and the behavior intention of its Stories feature (Amancio 2017; Valiant and Setiawan 2017). During the COVID-19, social media technologies were important for disseminating information as many nonprofit health organizations sought to address public worries and the need for reliable information about the disease, leading public relations professionals and governments to view these platforms as an effective channel for strategic health communication and promoting public health preventive measures. For example, in order to connect virtually, Instagram has also added its donation sticker to more countries which helps users communicate with charities, and created a “Stay Home” shared story to encourage people who practice social distancing (Sharma and Agrawal 2020). While most ephemeral social media studies focus on individual users’ motivation to use Instagram and advertising, the effects of the ephemeral content and features of Instagram Stories about public health campaign were under-investigated. This paper follows Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) to explore the effects of Taiwan’s younger generation Instagram Stories usage (frequency, content, and features) on their intention to adopt epidemic prevention measures and subjective norms’ moderating effects. A total of 819 participants completed an online survey and the results showed significant positive relationships between Stories usage and behavior intention, attitudes and behavior intention, and between subjective norms and behavior intention, with attitudes moderated by subjective norms. The implications of the role of ephemeral social media play in public health campaign were discussed.
Subjects
ephemeral social media | Instagram Stories | public health campaign | subjective norms
SDGs
Type
conference paper