Lijuan Su’s research while affiliated with Sun Yat-sen University and other places

Cruise lines are adopting onboard quarantine as part of emergency response measures to the global pandemic. However, little is known about the social support embedded in the social-mediated communication process to assist passengers in coping and building resilience. Guided by the conservation of resource theory, this study adopted the netnography approach to analyze the online interactions between quarantined passengers on Diamond Princess and netizens. A qualitative approach was employed to analyze the content of a relational dataset consisting of 14 research subjects, 3,368 posts, and 67,964 comments. The results not merely showed the changing foci of the comments over time but also revealed the supporting role played by social media. The constant engagement with netizens provided passengers with information and social support, which contributed to their coping and resilience-building. These findings offer a new theoretical perspective on incorporating social media in tourism crisis management, as well as practical implications for cruise lines and tourism organizations to optimize their resource utilization for marketing recovery.

Social media is an important crisis communication channel, which can shape the public's risk perception and subsequently affect their attitudes, decisions, and behaviors. The significance of social-mediated crisis communication is further highlighted in times of a global pandemic, given people's increasing informational needs and reliance on social media. Guided by the Social Amplification of Risk Framework, this study explores the Chinese public's risk perception of cruise travel from a collective sensemaking perspective. This study used netnography to analyze 78,373 Weibo posts about cruise travel. The findings revealed the process of personal-level risk perceptions evolving into societal-level risk perceptions. The findings further demonstrated how the perceived risk of cruise travel was amplified by activating emotional contagion and public consensus. The role played by co-presence, social norms, and cultural values to amplify societal-level risk was highlighted. Finally, this study discusses the theoretical and managerial implications for managing public risk perception during pandemic times for cruise travel.