World leaders’ usage of Twitter in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: a content analysis

Abstract

Background It is crucial that world leaders mount effective public health measures in response to COVID-19. Twitter may represent a powerful tool to help achieve this. Here, we explore the role of Twitter as used by Group of Seven (G7) world leaders in response to COVID-19. Methods This was a qualitative study with content analysis. Inclusion criteria were as follows: viral tweets from G7 world leaders, attracting a minimum of 500 ‘likes’; keywords ‘COVID-19’ or ‘coronavirus’; search dates 17 November 2019 to 17 March 2020. We performed content analysis to categorize tweets into appropriate themes and analyzed associated Twitter data. Results Eight out of nine (88.9%) G7 world leaders had verified and active Twitter accounts, with a total following of 85.7 million users. Out of a total 203 viral tweets, 166 (82.8%) were classified as ‘Informative’, of which 48 (28.6%) had weblinks to government-based sources, while 19 (9.4%) were ‘Morale-boosting’ and 14 (6.9%) were ‘Political’. Numbers of followers and viral tweets were not strictly related. Conclusions Twitter may represent a powerful tool for world leaders to rapidly communicate public health information with citizens. We would urge general caution when using Twitter for health information, with a preference for tweets containing official government-based information sources.

Leveraging media and health communication strategies to overcome the COVID-19 infodemic

“…Twitter, specifically, proved to be a powerful tool for sharing health information. A content analysis of Twitter usage by Group of Seven (G7) world leaders in response to COVID-19 revealed that 82.8% of their COVID-19-related tweets were informative, 9.4% were morale-boosting, and 6.9% were political [30].…”

The Role of Twitter During the COVID-19 Crisis: A Systematic Literature Review

“…An extensive range of tweets has been shared by users and the general public, although politicians (Rufai & Bunce, 2020;Yum, 2020), physicians, and health professionals (Kudchadkar & Carroll, 2020;Wahbeh et al, 2020) have also utilized this platform to share news and provide information to people. Regular users on Twitter share most of their opinions, experiences, and feelings about the crisis.…”

“…The use of Twitter during the COVID-19 crisis has many advantages, including immediate communication between people, organizations, and governments, and the rapidity of providing information to people (Abd-Alrazaq et al, 2020;Aguilar-Gallegos et al, 2020;Chen et al, 2020b;Jimenez-Sotomayor et al, 2020;Kudchadkar & Carroll, 2020;Mackey et al, 2020;Thelwall & Levitt, 2020). Moreover, the data available on Twitter is used as a source for identifying geographical areas at risk and the outbreak of COVID-19 (Bisanzio et al, 2020;Klein et al, 2020;Mackey et al, 2020;Rufai & Bunce, 2020). Therefore, this data is increasingly useful for enhancing situational awareness and assisting in disaster management (Wang et al, 2015;Yang et al, 2016).…”

“…A 'like' indicates that a tweet is appreciated by a registered Twitter user, while a 'retweet' indicates that they have shared the tweet on their own Twitter page and a 'comment' indicates that they have added written commentary for the tweet. All of these actions increase the reach of the viral tweet in question (Rufai & Bunce, 2020). With 152 million daily users, Twitter has become an everyday part of the lives of many healthcare experts and helps them to convey medical information and warnings in real time to a broad global audience, especially those who are regarded as specialists and thought leaders of a specific area, and to receive opinions (Kullar et al, 2020).…”

On the predictability of COVID-19 in USA: A Google Trends analysis

“…As of April 20, 2020, already seven (7) papers on the topic of tracking and forecasting COVID-19 using Google Trends data have been published, according to PubMed (advanced search: covid AND google trends) [22], monitoring, analyzing, or forecasting COVID-19 in several regions like Taiwan [23], China [24][25], Europe [26][27], USA [27][28], Iran [27,29]. Note that for Twitter publications related to the COVID-19 pandemic, eight papers (8) are online up to this point (PubMed advanced search: covid AND twitter [22]), published from March 13 to April 20, 2020 [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. Table 1 consists of the systematic reporting of COVID-19 Google Trends studies, in the order of the reported publication date.…”