Our Findings

We looked at the statistics for Facebook, since this is the platform that allows for more detailed messages to reach the public. Facebook does not provide statistics on how many people actually read a post. Marketers use approximations based on the number of friends (or followers) an account has. Current estimates for Singapore (Jan 2020): page posts reach on average 4.03% of a page followers. For the MOH site, that's about 15K people reached by post, or 0.26% of the country's population of about 5 million.

The majority of Facebook posts (57%) focuses on recapping the number of daily infections, mostly on foreign worker dormitories. This topic ranks 2nd on user Share preferences.

While keeping the population informed on the containment measures in dense housing, these messages have little educational value.

Posts related to education and behavior management (Safe Distancing, Masks, Hygiene, etc), rank 2nd in the posts frequency rates, at a low 14%. It ranks 3rd in the users Shares preferences.

While users do take notice of such educational posts, their presence is drowned by to prevalence of posts that recap the number of daily infections.

Conclusion: the penetration of official social media accounts in too low, and the measurable reaction to the posts is too low to allow any conclusions on their effectiveness.

Analysis of Pearson correlation found a strong correlation between the average number of daily new cases and the frequency rate of messages related to wearing masks.

No correlation was found between messages for any specific behaviors and the number of infections 14 days later.

Conclusion: the contents (topic) of official messaging is related to the daily infection trends, which indicates that government officials react to increases/decreases in infection numbers.

Cases data shows a steep climb in the number of new cases during the first 14 days of April. The Government issued two kinds of mandates to contain the spread: In late March several travel restrictions are put in place, which in effect reduced the number of air travel arrival and departure passengers in April and May to less than 1% of the monthly average for 2019. Travel restrictions include Travel Advisories for Singapore residents, mandatory 14-day isolation for arriving residents, prohibition of entry and transit of short-term visitors.

In early April elevated Social Distancing mandates are enacted (04/03). Masks in public are mandated by 04/15, while cases are still increasing sharply.

By early May we can see the first significant drops in new infections (about 2 weeks after Masks mandate, and 4 weeks after start of Circuit Breaker measures). New infections continue to trend down during May, and Circuit Breaker restrictions are eased or lifted by Jun 01.

Conclusion: the combination of border controls and elevated safe distancing measures were effective in controlling the rise in new infections. While the government used social media to communicate and educate, the success of of measures is also influenced by Singapore's ability to enforce restrictions in a tightly controlled society.