Crisis Coordination and the Role of Social Media in Response to COVID-19 in Wuhan, China

• DOI: 10.1177/0275074020942105
• Published date: 01 August 2020
• Date: 01 August 2020
• Subject Matter: Citizen Access to Public Health InformationImproving Communication Capacity & Credibility

https://doi.org/10.1177/0275074020942105

American Review of Public Administration

2020, Vol. 50(6-7) 698 –705

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0275074020942105

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Improving Communication Capacity & Credibility

Introduction

Exogenous shocks such as disasters often adversely affect

regime stability and the welfare of communities. Emergency

and crisis management literature suggests that disasters mag-

nify the preexisting sources of political and societal instabil-

ity (Drury & Olson, 1998; Pelling & Dill, 2010). In recent

years, emergency management systems have been estab-

lished worldwide in response to and in anticipation of disas-

ters. Most of the research in this domain paid much attention

to the communication and coordination within traditional

hierarchical and horizontal systems and their interactions

with nonprofit and private sector organizations (Comfort,

2007; Kapucu, 2006). The research also indicates that a suc-

cessful emergency management system requires the public

administrators’ ability to aggregate and make sense of mas-

sive amounts of information during disasters (Jones, 1999;

Walgrave & Dejaeghere, 2017). During a major health crisis

such as the recent COVID-19 outbreak, it is expected that

different levels of government have access to different types

and amount of information at the ground level (e.g., local

governments access local situations better than the central

government), and this creates the problem of information

asymmetry among public administrators and prevents them

from making timely decisions and taking appropriate actions.

This then leads to an important question that we seek to

address in this commentary: How does a central government

mitigate information asymmetry problems during pandemic

crises?

Conventional theory casts that bounded rationality and

institutional friction highly affect government information

processing (Birkland, 1997; Simon, 1997) and thereby affect

government’s response to crises. Life-threatening pandemics

require rapid actions, and this may paralyze routine opera-

tion of administration and the regular policymaking process.

Bureaucrats are often at the crossroads between maintaining

administrative tradition versus taking swift and critical

actions to curb a disease outbreak.

A growing literature has emerged around governments’

use of information and communication technology (ICT)

tools and social media in emergency management (Hu &

Kapucu, 2016; Mergel, 2012; Wukich et al., 2019).

Unfortunately, little research has explored the interactions

between central and local governments during crisis response

and how the central government’s emergency management

action is influenced by the social media. An emerging trend

during COVID-19 pandemic is the governments’ use of ICT

tools as the means to assist citizens who need immediate help

as well as to collect information at the ground level. For

942105ARPXXX10.1177/0275074020942105The American Review of Public AdministrationLi et al.

research-article2020

1University of Macau, Taipa, China

2The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong

3University of Central Florida, Orlando, USA

Corresponding Author:

Naim Kapucu, Pegasus Professor, School of Public Administration,

University of Central Florida, 528 W. Livingston St., Suite 440B, Orlando,

FL 32801, USA.

Email: kapucu@ucf.edu

Crisis Coordination and the Role

of Social Media in Response to

COVID-19 in Wuhan, China

Yiran Li1, Yanto Chandra2, and Naim Kapucu3

Abstract

The commentary addresses the government’s role in mitigating information asymmetry problems during pandemic crisis

response. We use the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, as a case to show the use of social media as a key

mechanism in shaping the actions of the central government in its coordination with the local governments during the

pandemic response. The Chinese government effectively collaborated with a social media platform to not only create a

dedicated channel to allow citizens to post information about the pandemic to accelerate the speed of relief but also mobilize

citizens and nonprofit organizations to support government response and recovery efforts. This suggests that social media

can provide a venue for the government to not only tackle the information overload but also mitigate the friction among

levels of governments.

Keywords

crisis coordination, social media, COVID-19, information asymmetry