Building social resilience during disasters: an investigation into the role of online social media networks

Abstract

Within the last ten years, the world witnessed four serious epidemics. COVID-19 has been the most serious of these ones in terms of the number of people affected and the lives lost. In order to contain the spread of the disease many countries including Sri Lanka enforced 24 hour curfews. The social isolation created by lockdowns creates many problems in people including anxiety and depression. Many studies have been carried out on effect of lockdowns on mental well being of people. But, so far nobody has studied whether online social me can help people overcome the negative effects of lockdowns. This research was carried out to fill this gap. An online survey was carried out to understand how people used social media during the continuous curfew enforced by the Sri Lankan government. The research found that the average time spent using social media has increased compared to normal days. Also, majority of the users agreed that the social media helped them overcome the boredom created by the lockdown. This fact was confirmed using statistical tests in this study.