Devoted to equal dialogue and social change, participatory communication has been recognized as an important key to effective health communication projects, and also a crucial part of emergency management. The sudden outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia in China at the end of 2019, has immediately turned into a nationwide epidemic and public health crisis. Followed by the relatively slow response of public health emergency sector and failed government information disclosure in the epicenter of the outbreak at the very earliest stage, communication chaos, characterized by misinformation, rumors, and widespread panic, are arising dramatically. Unlike Ebola, MERS and other infectious diseases, the current COVID-2019 epidemic corresponds with billions of Chinese people traveling and migrating across the whole country in the annually Spring Festival peak travel season, flooding into their hometown - the vast rural area of China. More than 5 million people left Wuhan - the epidemic outbreak region - before the city was sealed off. Therefore, how to facilitate effective communication targeted at uninformed and lower-health literate rural residents is critical to containing the rapid spread of disease.
To control the novel coronavirus pneumonia epidemic, Local beliefs and attitudes in Chinese rural areas were a deterrent to behavior change, which is, calling attention to the importance of grassroots and local dialogue oriented toward improved health and bridging the rural-urban disparity and gap.The study is based on quantitative and qualitative analysis of rural media practices, observations and in-depth interviews of local residents in a small village in north-western China, called Balipu located in Gan Su province, which was a typical specimen with zero transmission and large input population, also in spite of the extremely poor personal protection awareness, limited channels to updated reports on digital media especially for the middle-aged and elderly, ethnic traditions to pay New Year's visit door by door during the festival, and other disadvantaged conditions. However, public and private sectors in this small village are working in close collaboration with each other, devoting to initiating the localized dialogue. Street banners and slogans, village radio broadcasting in local dialect, local drama vlog for health education on short video platforms like Douyin and Kuaishou, etc., these communication practices allows us to explore capabilities of media to implement social mobilization and risk communication in underdeveloped and isolated regions, no matter it is 'old' or 'new', to across the knowledge gap in this digitalized era, and to consider the relationship between technological capabilities and the social practices and goals of users, especially in the event of crisis.
The focus of this study is to: (1) assess the most accessible channels for rural residents across age groups and gender to keep informed; (2) evaluate whether the same prevention instructions were spread by different media and if they varied by channel outlet; (3) determine the content and formatting of these media information, and the perspectives of those who participate in creating and consuming media, could alter rural residents' behavior, attitudes, and beliefs, such as wearing mask, staying inside and less gathering.