Assessing COVID-19 pandemic communication in China: What we know about the communication channels, sources of information, and key message retention. Part of the research panel of Learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic: Cross-cultural differences in risk and crisis communication strategies

Abstract: This research presents the findings from a large-scale national online survey of Chinese citizens (N = 1,713) about their general knowledge of COVID-19 and the key communication channels that they used both during and after the pandemic. The perceived impact of COVID-19, personal safety concern, and information retention during the times of lockdown and post-pandemic were investigated over the four quarters of 2020. Particularly, we asked surveyed Chinese citizens to evaluate the quality of communication via three major categories of media channels (i.e., traditional media, digital media, and user-generated content on social media). Major sources of COVID-19 information and related source credibility were also investigated and compared.