Calibrating Information and Affect Across a Prolonged Public Health Crisis: A Local Health Commission’s Social Media Curation of Government-Citizen Interactions

How government health agencies manage information and affect in social media comment sections across the phases of a public health emergency is crucial yet underexamined. We conceptualize interactive comment curation as health agencies' selective publication of, and strategic replies to, user comments, yielding a publicly visible record of agency-citizen interactions. Combining the dual-function model of supportive communication, which distinguishes informational from affective support, with the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) framework's stage-specific communication tasks, we examine how the Shenzhen Health Commission curated comments on its official WeChat account, Shenxiaowei, during the COVID-19 pandemic (January 2020-December 2022). Content and time-series analyses of 1,829 single-round agency-citizen comment-reply dyads trace a shift from affective reassurance in the initial stage toward targeted informational and affective support as the Omicron-driven maintenance stage renewed uncertainty. Granger causality tests further indicate that pandemic severity indicators preceded these curation shifts. We demonstrate how health agencies can integrate informational and affective support into interactive comment curation as a stage-sensitive strategy to sustain public engagement during prolonged health crises.