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Can Social Media Help Regulate the Emotional Burnout during the COVID-19 Pandemic?: A Multilevel Approach.

BACKGROUND
In February 2020, the Chinese government imposed a complete lockdown of Wuhan and other cities in Hubei Province to contain the spike of the new COVID-19 cases. Although such measures are effective in preventing the spread of the virus, medical professionals strongly voiced a caveat concerning the pandemic emotional burnout at the individual level. Although the lockdown limited individuals' interpersonal communication with people in their social networks, it is common that individuals turn to social media to seek and share health information, exchange social support, and express pandemic-generated feelings.


OBJECTIVE
Based on a holistic and multilevel perspective, this study examined how pandemic-related emotional exhaustion enacts intrapersonal, interpersonal, and hyperpersonal-level emotional regulation strategies, and then evaluated the effectiveness of these strategies, with a particular interest in understanding the role of hyperpersonal-level regulation or social media-based regulation.


METHODS
Using an online panel, this study sampled 538 Chinese internet users from Hubei Province, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in China. Survey data collection lasted for 12 days from February 7 to February 18, two weeks after Hubei Province being placed under quarantine. The sample has an average age of 35 years old (range=18-78, SD=10.65) and a majority being married (68.6%).


RESULTS
Using structural equation modeling, this study finds that intrapersonal-level (B=.22, β=.24, p<.001) and interpersonal-level emotional regulation strategies (B=.35, β=.49, p<.001) are positively associated with individuals' outcome reappraisal. In contrast with intrapersonal and interpersonal-level regulations, hyperpersonal-level (social media-based) regulation strategies, such as disclosing and retweeting negative emotions, are negatively related to the outcome reappraisal (B=-1.00, β=-.80, p<.001).


CONCLUSIONS
Consistent with the previous literature, intrapersonal-level regulation (such as cognitive reappraisal, mindfulness, and self-kindness) and interpersonal-level supportive interaction may generate a buffering effect on emotional exhaustion, and promote individuals' reappraisal towards the stressful situation. However, hyperpersonal-level regulation may exacerbate the experienced negative emotions, and impedes reappraisal of the pandemic situation. It is speculated that retweeting content that contains pandemic-related stress and anxiety may cause digital emotion contagion. Individuals who share other people's negative emotional expressions on social media are likely to be affected by the negative affect contagion. More importantly, the possible benefits of intrapersonal and interpersonal-level emotion regulations may be canceled out by social media or hyperpersonal regulation. It suggests the necessity to conduct social media-based health communication intervention to mitigate the social media-wide negative affect contagion if lockdown policies related to highly infectious diseases were to be initiated.


CLINICALTRIAL