Perceptions of social media users to government regulations and measures during COVID-19 pandemic in Jordan: a qualitative study

ABSTRACT

During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media played an important role in disseminating information and procedures for dealing with this pandemic, however, there is a lack of studies investigating the perceptions of social media users concerning the regulations and measures issued by authorities to encounter and cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, which was exceptional at that time. Therefore, this study purposed to explore the perceptions of social media users about the regulations and instructions of the authorities’ measures in times of the COVID-19 pandemic in Jordan. A qualitative method including thematic analysis and content analysis was adopted to evaluate social media posts, which involved the text and images found in these posts during the period from March 2020 to June 2020. Three social media websites were included in the study, namely Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter. Five themes were extracted from 317 posts, including COVID-19 is a bubble economy, COVID-19 is a political game, health-related information about COVID-19 and safety precautions, COVID-19 regulations influenced personal restrictions and freedom confiscation, and COVID-19 is a financial burden. Thus, this study may provide recommendations for policy-makers to develop campaigns and activities based on people’s perspectives and design the appropriate health and economic promotions and interventions.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• perceptions
• posts
• social media
• government regulations

Acknowledgements

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee (Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan). Each participant provided informed consent before beginning the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).