Social media as amplification station: factors that influence the speed of online public response to health emergencies

Abstract

Online public response to health emergencies is a major and complex public health issue. This study employs hierarchical linear modeling to investigate the speed of online users’ response to health emergency information on Chinese microblogging sites. The distribution of response speed for all posts is highly skewed. Only a minimal number of posts are forwarded in less than one minute. We further examine the effects of the characteristics of original messages as well as the effects of the factors of reposted messages and information transmitters, to determine the response time of messages on health emergencies. Original messages with different emotional orientations have different response times. The homophily of geographical location among dyadic information transmitters, the addressivity of reposted messages, and the degree of activity and popularity of information transmitters shorten the response time. This study expands the social amplification of risk model to an online context and contributes to the literature on information diffusion by identifying the effects of dyadic relationships among information transmitters. Practical implications are briefly discussed.