Social Listening in Eastern and Southern Africa, a UNICEF Risk Communication and Community Engagement Strategy to Address the COVID-19 Infodemic

"Insights from social data have been instrumental to ensuring that COVID-19 communication for behavior change and program delivery are aligned with concerns and needs expressed by the communities served."

During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, particularly in a context where there have not been widely available vaccines or therapeutics, behaviour change has been central to mitigation efforts. The characterisation of the COVID-19 pandemic as an "infodemic" has led institutions working on the response to further refine risk communication and engagement (RCCE) strategic plans and guidance to meet the challenge of a harmful overflow of information that can hinder risk perception and affect individual health decision-making. One such institution is the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), which has been working in the Eastern and Southern Africa region with partners to gather insights on people's information needs to better inform and engage with local communities. This article describes the digital and nondigital social listening undertaken in the region and 5 of its countries to guide COVID-19 RCCE. The analysis explores channels leveraged, types of data monitored, examples of social listening data use, and early challenges and lessons learned.

In brief, as illustrated by the figure above and as elaborated in the article, social listening is a process of identifying questions, concerns, complaints, and suggestions shared by communities. This approach can help identify rumours and false information (misinformation and disinformation). As part of this process, UNICEF has integrated insights from digital platforms into existing mechanisms for gathering community feedback on the ground. Key elements of a social listening strategy examined here include:

• Clear objectives and a defined scope of work - The Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Social Media Monitoring and Rumor Management Strategy to Support RCCE on COVID-19, developed in June 2020 by the UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO), aimed to contribute to 3 objectives related to COVID-19 RCCE: (i) mitigate potential effects of misinformation on adoption of recommended behaviours, demand, and uptake of services; (ii) inform the design and implementation of high-quality digital communication for content that meets information needs and responds to concerns and rumours shared by different audiences; and (iii) reinforce country-level capacity in rumour tracking and management.
• Established framework - Any social listening exercise is embedded within the larger communication ecosystem it is trying to understand and feed into. The underlying approach relies on the concepts of integration between online and offline channels, so as to avoid exacerbating inequities or deepening the digital gap, as well as horizontal collaboration with RCCE partners working on the response in the region.
• Resource mapping of the regional communication ecosystem and tools already available to monitor its components - Activities include mechanisms to track feedback offline (e.g., using phone-administered polls, national COVID-19 hotlines, or in-person community feedback) and through broadcast media monitoring, digital media monitoring, mobile engagement initiatives, and analysis of data from social media platforms.
• Standards for listening, analysis, and dissemination - Establishing a routine for social listening activities helps to ensure the consistency of data collection over time and to maximise the ability to pick up early signals of misinformation and rumours. Finding ways to sustainably disseminate insights is also necessary.
• Monitoring activities - Defining key indicators and setting up structures to monitor ongoing performance are central to a social listening strategy. As with objectives, selected indicators should be aligned with broader monitoring and evaluation (M&E) frameworks.
• Capacity-building and engagement - Sustainability of a social listening strategy requires enhancement of response partners' social listening and infodemic management capacity. For example, the Africa Infodemic Response Alliance provides technical assistance to countries in tracking and managing rumours related to COVID-19, vaccines, and polio, while supporting the creation of a workflow that would implement the 4 pillars of the World Health Organization (WHO) infodemic management framework. Insights from social listening data have also been used to mobilise the region's key partners - particularly religious leaders and communities, who play a key role in influencing behaviours and beliefs - on key actions including misinformation and rumour management.

To illustrate these concepts, examples of social listening activities in national COVID-19 response are provided:

1. Comoros - For example, to collect community feedback offline, the UNICEF Comoros country office partnered with a mobile company and the National Regulation Authority of Information and Communications Technology to establish a free, 24-hour-a-day/7-day-a-week COVID-19 hotline (1717), with 3 call centres and 54 call operators on the 3 islands of Ngazidja, Ndzouani, and Mwali.
2. Kenya - One component of this work is leveraging data shared by external partners to complement UNICEF Kenya's own social listening activities. For example, Shujaaz Inc. ("heroes"), an interactive multimedia youth platform that promotes interactive engagement on COVID-19-related issues with adolescents, consolidates and shares highlights from these conversations through reports such as the Shujaaz Barometer. For the overall work, a messaging matrix that all actors use to produce communications materials is updated as the situation evolves and as behavioural insights and necessary responses to social listening and feedback emerge.
3. Madagascar - For example, jointly with the Ministry of Public Health and other partners, UNICEF Madagascar is supporting an emergency hotline (910, referred to as the "green line"), which is complemented by collection by community leaders and agents of feedback and questions from their regular interactions with community members. The Communication Sub-Committee For the Fight Against Epidemics organises a monthly national virtual communication workshop with all the communication and health promotion focal points from the country's 22 administrative regions.
4. Malawi - UNICEF Malawi conducts online and social media monitoring (using a tailored digital monitoring dashboard), along with leveraging UNICEF-owned channels such as U-Report and the Internet of Good Things - e.g., to launch mythbuster quizzes and collect data while illuminating information on questions, rumours, and potential hesitancy.
5. Zambia - UNICEF Zambia supported the establishment of a short-term COVID-19-specific call centre, administers mythbuster polls online through U-Report, and engages users with an short messaging service (SMS) bot. The national RCCE subcommittee that works on dynamic listening and rumour management uses the weekly social listening report to monitor the conversation on COVID-19 happening in the country to produce messaging that adapts to shifting myths and information needs.

Some challenges and lessons learned include:

• Online and offline social listening mechanisms are set up differently in terms of governance structures, which creates challenges in harmonising the reporting and triangulation of insights.
• The speed at which the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated infodemic spread has also required social listening systems to be set up quickly with available tools; in the long term, it will be important to consider the development of ad hoc monitoring platforms for digital monitoring that can easily integrate with existing channels of feedback and focus on the needs of the communities served.
• Measuring the use of social listening data and their impact, both upstream and downstream, is an area where further work is needed.

In conclusion: "Moving forward, resources built with a specific focus on the immediate COVID-19 response are being adapted and expanded to meet ongoing challenges such as the social impact of the pandemic on access to services and to prepare for COVID-19 vaccine rollout. The continuation and strengthening of these mechanisms are key to emergency preparedness and response plans beyond COVID-19 to allow for proactive management of future infodemics."