Science-Brokers or Sense-Givers: How Experts Participate in Public Crisis Communication on Social Media

Abstract

Although the participations of experts on social media are recognized as important in public crisis communication, research attention to exploring this phenomenon is still lacking. This research discussed the critical and instrumental approaches to expert participation in crisis communication while arguing that a sensemaking approach is more appropriate due to the decentralized and interactive characteristics of social media. This study employed a quantitative content analysis by coding 917 Weibo trending posts by expert accounts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings show that experts on social media were mostly grassroot professionals who played irreplaceable roles in making sense of crises in the early phase when the crisis signals are uncertain and ambiguous. Additionally, this study identified four different participation styles, including the science-brokers, opinion-expressers, information-transmitters, and sense-givers. The majority of the experts in the case acted as opinion-expressers by raising critiques and comments instead of as science-brokers who explain the latest scientific findings. Discussions ensued on the significance of moving away from a simplistic view and embracing the dynamics and diversity of expert participation in crisis communication in the social media era.