Changes in health communication in the age of COVID-19: A study on the dissemination of preprints to the public

Preprints have become an important tool for meeting the challenges of health communication in the context of COVID-19. They allow scientists to disseminate their results more quickly due to the absence of a peer review process. Preprints have been well-received by scientists, however, there have bee...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inFrontiers in public health Vol. 11; p. 1078115
Main Author Zeng, Li
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland Frontiers Media S.A 08.02.2023
Subjects
COVID-19
COVID-19 - epidemiology
Health Communication
Humans
Mass Media
open science
Pandemics
preprints
Public Health
science communication
scientific journalism
COVID-19
open science
scientific journalism
preprints
health communication
science communication
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Summary:Preprints have become an important tool for meeting the challenges of health communication in the context of COVID-19. They allow scientists to disseminate their results more quickly due to the absence of a peer review process. Preprints have been well-received by scientists, however, there have been concerns about the exposure of wider public audiences to preprints due in part to this lack of peer review. The aim of this study is to examine the dissemination of preprints on medRxiv and bioRxiv during the COVID-19 pandemic using content analysis and statistical analysis. Our findings show that preprints have played an unprecedented role in disseminating COVID-19-related science results to the public. While the overall media coverage of preprints is unsatisfactory, digital native news media performed better than legacy media in reporting preprints, which means that we could make the most of digital native media to improve health communication. This study contributes to understanding how science communication has evolved in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and provides some practical recommendations.
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Edited by: Graça S. Carvalho, University of Minho, Portugal
Reviewed by: Dimity Stephen, German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW), Germany; Liam Brierley, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom
This article was submitted to Public Health Education and Promotion, a section of the journal Frontiers in Public Health
ISSN:2296-2565
2296-2565
DOI:10.3389/fpubh.2023.1078115