Background:

   Public’s willingness to comply with the epidemic prevention measures is a key in the control of pandemic like COVID-19. The compliance is often determined by how the pubic receive the information of prevention measures and how they interpret it. Some experts found that the episodic framing was more effective than thematic framing in disseminating information (Nick Byrd，2021). Is it true in China’s situation? 

Objectives:

   The purpose of the paper is to compare two sets of narratives – episodic vs. thematic, and gain framing vs. loss framing. We take Bilibili (similar to Youtube), one of the most influential video websites among youths in China, as the scope of analysis. Thus, we propose that in disseminating the prevention measures: (1) Episodic framing is more effective than thematic framing in China. (2) Loss framing is more effective than gain framing in China.

Methods:

   First, we limited the time span around the date of January 23, 2020, when Wuhan, China was locked down, from January 20 to April 20, 2020. Second, we used the keywords “epidemic prevention measures”and “spread of COVID-19”with the most hits to list the video clips. Third, we selected the clips released by the mainstream media only. Fourthly, we analyzed the word frequency in both Danmaku and Comments. Generally speaking, public’s messages can reflect their interpretation of the video information, inferring their compliance to the epidemic prevention measures.

Results:

   There are 5 clips with different narrative framings. Number 1,2 and 5 were released by Youth League. Number 3 was retweeted by Guanchacn from India media, and Number 4 was retweeted from NHK. We listed the link, title, Video View/Thumb-up, Tag, Danmaku Count/Word Frequency, and Comment Count/Word Frequency.

   From the results, first, we can see that under gain framing, no matter whether it is episodic or thematic framing, public pay more attention to the featured tags with little attention to the epidemic preventions. This is different from Byrd’s research.

   Second, under thematic framing, loss framing is better than gain framing, no matter whether it is retweeted from NHK or released by Youth League in China. This supports our second hypothesis.

   Third, under thematic and gain framing, both domestic or abroad clips can attract less understanding of the contents that the clips want to convey.

Conclusion:

   From the above, we can draw the conclusion that if we want public to follow the epidemic prevention recommendations, loss framing is a better way to disseminating the information.