Official pages of organizations and official bodies on Facebook and health awareness of the Corona virus

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Assistant Lecturer at Canadian Higher Institute of Modern Media Technology

Abstract

The Corona pandemic has contributed to changing the normal life and transferring the world to a new social phenomenon, which has affected the nature and quality of social cohesion and human relations, as the world is pursuing a policy of social distance and communication through new media technology to protect ourselves  against this virus, so the research problem is: «Evaluation of the communication role of the official page of the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population and the official page of the World Health Organization - Egypt on Facebook, and comparing the methods -used by both of them- of dealing with the health crisis in Egypt, especially the corona virus.
This study seeks to reveal the contributions of social media sites in the field of health awareness in the period of the Corona virus by applying to the official page of the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population and the official page of the World Health Organization - Egypt, and comparing the adaptation of each of them to modern technological means and social networking sites to communicate with their audiences in times of crisis.
The study adopted the theory of "Media Richness" as a theoretical framework, as the study is based on the comparative approach, to identify the similarities and differences used by the official page of the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population and the official page of the World Health Organization Egypt on the site "Facebook" in the field of health awareness of the virus Corona. The study uses a content analysis form to analyze posts published in the Official Page of the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population and the Official Page of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Facebook in the field of health awareness of the corona virus.
A content analysis of two Facebook pages on the health situation in Egypt, the Official Page of the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population - the official page of the World Health Organization Egypt, was carried out between mid-February 2020 and the end of December 2020, and since it was difficult to take the total study community due to the large number of posts, the sample of the study was identified using the regular random sample, applying the artificial  week method of selecting sample.
The study reached many conclusions, the most important of which were: the health issue of the corona virus ranked first in the posts of the official page of the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population and the official page of the World Health Organization Egypt in the period of analysis, with 82% of the official page of the World Health Organization, while 61% of the posts of the Ministry of Health and Population paid attention to the "Virus" on Facebook, and the two pages focused on the dissemination of information on the corona virus at 57.6% of the total of the world health organization as a serious epidemic and transmission of the virus. A major impact on the health of the individual, a new virus globally and not only locally, and does not have a proven vaccine yet, so the individual is in dire need of reliable and confirmed information about the virus, in terms of the nature of the disease, methods of infection, and ways of preventing it.
The official page of the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population and the Official Page of the World Health Organization (WHO Egypt) on Facebook provided the individual with knowledge and information regarding the corona virus, with 71.2% of the total posts in the analysis period, including posts containing the dissemination of information on the number of daily infections and deaths, ways of infection, how to prevent it, and the relationship of Corona virus with other diseases.
The audience interacted more with the official page of the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population compared to its counterpart, who, whether by liking, commenting or sharing, is also noted by the increased public interaction with posts on the numbers of infected and dead, the development of the virus, and there was lack of interaction with posts dealing with health issues other than the CORONA virus.
 
 

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