Journal Article

Cross-Cultural Sense-Making of Global Health Crises: A Text Mining Study of Public Opinions on Social Media Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Developed and Developing Economies

Kahlawi, Adham, Vidal-Alaball, Josep, Masri, Firas, Ahmed, Wasim

2025

Overview

The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped social dynamics, fostering reliance on social media for information, connection, and collective sense-making. Understanding how citizens navigate a global health crisis in varying cultural and economic contexts is crucial for effective crisis communication. This study examines the evolution of citizen collective sense-making during the COVID-19 pandemic by analyzing social media discourse across Italy, the United Kingdom, and Egypt, representing diverse economic and cultural contexts. A total of 755,215 social media posts from X (formerly Twitter) were collected across 3 time periods: the virus' emergence (February 15 to March 31, 2020), strict lockdown (April 1 to May 30, 2020), and the vaccine rollout (December 1, 2020 to January 15, 2021). In total, 284,512 posts from Italy, 261,978 posts from the United Kingdom, and 209,725 posts from Egypt were analyzed using the latent Dirichlet allocation algorithm to identify key thematic topics and track shifts in discourse across time and regions. The analysis revealed significant regional and temporal differences in collective sense-making during the pandemic. In Italy and the United Kingdom, public discourse prominently addressed pragmatic health care measures and government interventions, reflecting higher institutional trust. By contrast, discussions in Egypt were more focused on religious and political themes, highlighting skepticism toward governmental capacity and reliance on alternative frameworks for understanding the crisis. Over time, all 3 countries displayed a shift in discourse toward vaccine-related topics during the later phase of the pandemic, highlighting its global significance. Misinformation emerged as a recurrent theme across regions, demonstrating the need for proactive measures to ensure accurate information dissemination. These findings emphasize the role of cultural, economic, and institutional factors in shaping public responses during health crises. Crisis communication is influenced by cultural, economic, and institutional contexts, as evidenced by regional variations in citizen engagement. Transparent and culturally adaptive communication strategies are essential to combat misinformation and build public trust. This study highlights the importance of tailoring crisis responses to local contexts to improve compliance and collective resilience.

• Publisher: Journal of Medical Internet Research,Gunther Eysenbach MD MPH, Associate Professor,JMIR Publications
• Subject: Attitudes / Citizen participation / Citizens / Communication / Communication strategies / Computer mediated communication / Conspiracy / COVID-19 / COVID-19 - epidemiology / COVID-19 vaccines / Crises / Cross-Cultural Comparison / Cultural differences / Cultural factors / Data Mining / Developed Countries / Developing Countries / Discourse / Discourse analysis / Discourse strategies / Dissemination / Economic factors / Egypt - epidemiology / Epidemics / False information / Global Health / Health / Health aspects / Health care / Health care measures / Health education / Health information / Health services / Human capital / Humans / Immunization / Information dissemination / Information sources / Intercultural communication / Italy - epidemiology / Mass media / Mass media images / Medical research / Misinformation / Multiculturalism & pluralism / Original Paper / Pandemics / Public health / Public Opinion / Recurrent / Regional differences / Regions / Reliance / Resilience / SARS-CoV-2 / Shared cognition / Social aspects / Social dynamics / Social media / Social Media - statistics & numerical data / Social networks / Social systems / Time periods / United Kingdom - epidemiology / Viruses / World health