Social Media as Online Shelter: Psychological Relief in COVID-19 Pandemic Diaries

The pandemic diary on social media is a special form of online communication. Studying individual narratives in social networks during the pandemic and post-pandemic periods can help us generate valuable knowledge about the behaviors of media users and the function of social media in a public health crisis. This research focuses on psychological relief in virtual public spaces and explores how social media individual narratives affect people’s psychological health in a state of emergency from the perspective of narrative theory. Based on 19 in-depth interviews with Chinese diary writers, it has been found that the narrative genres of the pandemic diary were mainly Restitution and Quest narrative, while a few were categorized as “Restrained chaos” narrative. The purpose of editing pandemic diaries is to communicate both inwardly and outwardly. The pandemic diary can promote self-relief, public communication, emotional drive, meaning connection, and identity construction in public spaces, thus helping shape a sense of unity and belonging, and facilitating the psychological reconstruction of people who are vulnerable to potential mental health crises.