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      The use of Twitter by state leaders and its impact on the public during the COVID-19 pandemic

      research-article
      Author(s): ∗
      Publication date (Electronic):
      Journal: Heliyon
      Publisher: Elsevier
      Keywords: Social sciences, Social media, Twitter, COVID-19, Uses and gratifications theory, Public communication, Political communication

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          Abstract

          The article examines how many leaders used Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic, in what way, and the impact they had on the public. In the context of Twitter, the impact on the public refers to the growth in followers as it signifies the increased interest of the public about information. 50,872 tweets were collected from 143 state leaders and an original dataset was created containing information on the growth of followers. Ordinary least squares regression models were used for the analysis. It was found that 64.8% of UN member states had a leader that tweeted about COVID-19. Furthermore, a significant increase in the number of followers during the pandemic compared to months prior was noted. Since March, the pandemic has been a dominant topic on Twitter. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the highest percentage increase in gaining Twitter followers was experienced by politicians who frequently tweeted and those who had a lower ratio of the number of followers to internet users. The research implies that citizens are interested in being informed about emergencies through social networks, and government officials should use them.

          Abstract

          Social sciences; Social media; Twitter; COVID-19; Uses and gratifications theory; Public communication; Political communication.

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          Responding to Covid-19 — A Once-in-a-Century Pandemic?

          Bill Gates (2020)
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            Top Concerns of Tweeters During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Infoveillance Study

            Alaa A Abd-alrazaq, Dari Alhuwail, Mowafa S. Househ … (2020)
            Background The recent coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is taking a toll on the world’s health care infrastructure as well as the social, economic, and psychological well-being of humanity. Individuals, organizations, and governments are using social media to communicate with each other on a number of issues relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. Not much is known about the topics being shared on social media platforms relating to COVID-19. Analyzing such information can help policy makers and health care organizations assess the needs of their stakeholders and address them appropriately. Objective This study aims to identify the main topics posted by Twitter users related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods Leveraging a set of tools (Twitter’s search application programming interface (API), Tweepy Python library, and PostgreSQL database) and using a set of predefined search terms (“corona,” “2019-nCov,” and “COVID-19”), we extracted the text and metadata (number of likes and retweets, and user profile information including the number of followers) of public English language tweets from February 2, 2020, to March 15, 2020. We analyzed the collected tweets using word frequencies of single (unigrams) and double words (bigrams). We leveraged latent Dirichlet allocation for topic modeling to identify topics discussed in the tweets. We also performed sentiment analysis and extracted the mean number of retweets, likes, and followers for each topic and calculated the interaction rate per topic. Results Out of approximately 2.8 million tweets included, 167,073 unique tweets from 160,829 unique users met the inclusion criteria. Our analysis identified 12 topics, which were grouped into four main themes: origin of the virus; its sources; its impact on people, countries, and the economy; and ways of mitigating the risk of infection. The mean sentiment was positive for 10 topics and negative for 2 topics (deaths caused by COVID-19 and increased racism). The mean for tweet topics of account followers ranged from 2722 (increased racism) to 13,413 (economic losses). The highest mean of likes for the tweets was 15.4 (economic loss), while the lowest was 3.94 (travel bans and warnings). Conclusions Public health crisis response activities on the ground and online are becoming increasingly simultaneous and intertwined. Social media provides an opportunity to directly communicate health information to the public. Health systems should work on building national and international disease detection and surveillance systems through monitoring social media. There is also a need for a more proactive and agile public health presence on social media to combat the spread of fake news.
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              Pandemics in the Age of Twitter: Content Analysis of Tweets during the 2009 H1N1 Outbreak

              Cynthia Chew, Gunther Eysenbach (2010)
              Background Surveys are popular methods to measure public perceptions in emergencies but can be costly and time consuming. We suggest and evaluate a complementary “infoveillance” approach using Twitter during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. Our study aimed to: 1) monitor the use of the terms “H1N1” versus “swine flu” over time; 2) conduct a content analysis of “tweets”; and 3) validate Twitter as a real-time content, sentiment, and public attention trend-tracking tool. Methodology/Principal Findings Between May 1 and December 31, 2009, we archived over 2 million Twitter posts containing keywords “swine flu,” “swineflu,” and/or “H1N1.” using Infovigil, an infoveillance system. Tweets using “H1N1” increased from 8.8% to 40.5% (R 2 = .788; p<.001), indicating a gradual adoption of World Health Organization-recommended terminology. 5,395 tweets were randomly selected from 9 days, 4 weeks apart and coded using a tri-axial coding scheme. To track tweet content and to test the feasibility of automated coding, we created database queries for keywords and correlated these results with manual coding. Content analysis indicated resource-related posts were most commonly shared (52.6%). 4.5% of cases were identified as misinformation. News websites were the most popular sources (23.2%), while government and health agencies were linked only 1.5% of the time. 7/10 automated queries correlated with manual coding. Several Twitter activity peaks coincided with major news stories. Our results correlated well with H1N1 incidence data. Conclusions This study illustrates the potential of using social media to conduct “infodemiology” studies for public health. 2009 H1N1-related tweets were primarily used to disseminate information from credible sources, but were also a source of opinions and experiences. Tweets can be used for real-time content analysis and knowledge translation research, allowing health authorities to respond to public concerns.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Michael Haman
                Journal
                Journal ID (nlm-ta): Heliyon
                Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Heliyon
                Title: Heliyon
                Publisher: Elsevier
                ISSN (Electronic): 2405-8440
                Publication date PMC-release: 19 November 2020
                Publication date Collection: November 2020
                Publication date (Electronic): 19 November 2020
                Volume: 6
                Issue: 11
                Electronic Location Identifier: e05540
                Affiliations
                [1]Department of Political Science; Philosophical Faculty; University of Hradec Kralové; Czech Republic
                Author notes
                [∗ ]Corresponding author. michael.haman@ 123456uhk.cz
                Article
                Publisher Item ID: S2405-8440(20)32383-5 Publisher ID: e05540
                DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e05540
                PMC ID: 7695954
                PubMed ID: 33294685
                SO-VID: 49d0feea-f022-43e7-a265-2018a96d9339
                Copyright © © 2020 The Author
                License:

                This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

                History
                Date received : 30 September 2020
                Date revision received : 18 October 2020
                Date accepted : 13 November 2020
                Categories
                Subject: Research Article

                Keywords: social sciences,social media,twitter,covid-19,uses and gratifications theory,public communication,political communication
                Data availability:
                Keywords: social sciences, social media, twitter, covid-19, uses and gratifications theory, public communication, political communication

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