The Impact of COVID-19 on Sport in Twitter: A Quantitative and Qualitative Content Analysis.
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SUBMITTER: Gonzalez LM
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8123335 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic led to the necessity of immediate crisis communication by public health authorities. In Germany, as in many other countries, people choose social media, including Twitter, to obtain real-time information and understanding of the pandemic and its consequences. Next to authorities, experts such as virologists and science communicators were very prominent at the beginning of German Twitter COVID-19 crisis communication.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to detect similarities and differences between public authorities and individual experts in COVID-19 crisis communication on Twitter during the first year of the pandemic.MethodsDescriptive analysis and quantitative content analysis were carried out on 8251 original tweets posted from January 1, 2020, to January 15, 2021. COVID-19-related tweets of 21 authorities and 18 experts were categorized into structural, content, and style components. Negative binomial regressions were performed to evaluate tweet spread measured by the retweet and like counts of COVID-19-related tweets.ResultsDescriptive statistics revealed that authorities and experts increasingly tweeted about COVID-19 over the period under study. Two experts and one authority were responsible for 70.26% (544,418/774,865) of all retweets, thus representing COVID-19 influencers. Altogether, COVID-19 tweets by experts reached a 7-fold higher rate of retweeting (t8,249=26.94, P<.001) and 13.9 times the like rate (t8,249=31.27, P<.001) compared with those of authorities. Tweets by authorities were much more designed than those by experts, with more structural and content components; for example, 91.99% (4997/5432) of tweets by authorities used hashtags in contrast to only 19.01% (536/2819) of experts' COVID-19 tweets. Multivariate analysis revealed that such structural elements reduce the spread of the tweets, and the incidence rate of retweets for authorities' tweets using hashtags was approximately 0.64 that of tweets without hashtags (Z=-6.92, P<.001). For experts, the effect of hashtags on retweets was insignificant (Z=1.56, P=.12).ConclusionsTwitter data are a powerful information source and suitable for crisis communication in Germany. COVID-19 tweet activity mirrors the development of COVID-19 cases in Germany. Twitter users retweet and like communications regarding COVID-19 by experts more than those delivered by authorities. Tweets have higher coverage for both authorities and experts when they are plain and for authorities when they directly address people. For authorities, it appears that it was difficult to win recognition during COVID-19. For all stakeholders studied, the association between number of followers and number of retweets was highly significantly positive (authorities Z=28.74, P<.001; experts Z=25.99, P<.001). Updated standards might be required for successful crisis communication by authorities.
| S-EPMC8698804 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Background The COVID-19 pandemic has been occurring concurrently with an infodemic of misinformation about the virus. Spreading primarily on social media, there has been a significant academic effort to understand the English side of this infodemic. However, much less attention has been paid to the Arabic side. Objective There is an urgent need to examine the scale of Arabic COVID-19 disinformation. This study empirically examines how Arabic speakers use specific hashtags on Twitter to express antivaccine and antipandemic views to uncover trends in their social media usage. By exploring this topic, we aim to fill a gap in the literature that can help understand conspiracies in Arabic around COVID-19. Methods This study used content analysis to understand how 13 popular Arabic hashtags were used in antivaccine communities. We used Twitter Academic API v2 to search for the hashtags from the beginning of August 1, 2006, until October 10, 2021. After downloading a large data set from Twitter, we identified major categories or topics in the sample data set using emergent coding. Emergent coding was chosen because of its ability to inductively identify the themes that repeatedly emerged from the data set. Then, after revising the coding scheme, we coded the rest of the tweets and examined the results. In the second attempt and with a modified codebook, an acceptable intercoder agreement was reached (Krippendorff α≥.774). Results In total, we found 476,048 tweets, mostly posted in 2021. First, the topic of infringing on civil liberties (n=483, 41.1%) covers ways that governments have allegedly infringed on civil liberties during the pandemic and unfair restrictions that have been imposed on unvaccinated individuals. Users here focus on topics concerning their civil liberties and freedoms, claiming that governments violated such rights following the pandemic. Notably, users denounce government efforts to force them to take any of the COVID-19 vaccines for different reasons. This was followed by vaccine-related conspiracies (n=476, 40.5%), including a Deep State dictating pandemic policies, mistrusting vaccine efficacy, and discussing unproven treatments. Although users tweeted about a range of different conspiracy theories, mistrusting the vaccine’s efficacy, false or exaggerated claims about vaccine risks and vaccine-related diseases, and governments and pharmaceutical companies profiting from vaccines and intentionally risking the general public health appeared the most. Finally, calls for action (n=149, 12.6%) encourage individuals to participate in civil demonstrations. These calls range from protesting to encouraging other users to take action about the vaccine mandate. For each of these categories, we also attempted to trace the logic behind the different categories by exploring different types of conspiracy theories for each category. Conclusions Based on our findings, we were able to identify 3 prominent topics that were prevalent amongst Arabic speakers on Twitter. These categories focused on violations of civil liberties by governments, conspiracy theories about the vaccines, and calls for action. Our findings also highlight the need for more research to better understand the impact of COVID-19 disinformation on the Arab world.
| S-EPMC9327499 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThe Covid-19 pandemic is characterized by uncertainty and constant change, forcing governments and health authorities to ramp up risk communication efforts. Consequently, visuality and social media platforms like Twitter have come to play a vital role in disseminating prevention messages widely. Yet to date, only little is known about what characterizes visual risk communication during the Covid-19 pandemic. To address this gap in the literature, this study's objective was to determine how visual risk communication was used on Twitter to promote the World Health Organisations (WHO) recommended preventative behaviours and how this communication changed over time.MethodsWe sourced Twitter's 500 most retweeted Covid-19 messages for each month from January-October 2020 using Crowdbreaks. For inclusion, tweets had to have visuals, be in English, come from verified accounts, and contain one of the keywords 'covid19', 'coronavirus', 'corona', or 'covid'. Following a retrospective approach, we then performed a qualitative content analysis of the 616 tweets meeting inclusion criteria.ResultsOur results show communication dynamics changed over the course of the pandemic. At the start, most retweeted preventative messages came from the media and health and government institutions, but overall, personal accounts with many followers (51.3%) predominated, and their tweets had the highest spread (10.0%, i.e., retweet count divided by followers). Messages used mostly photographs and images were found to be rich with information. 78.1% of Tweets contained 1-2 preventative messages, whereby 'stay home' and 'wear a mask' frequented most. Although more tweets used health loss framing, health gain messages spread more.ConclusionOur findings can inform the didactics of future crisis communication. The results underscore the value of engaging individuals, particularly influencers, as advocates to spread health risk messages and promote solidarity. Further, our findings on the visual characteristic of the most retweeted tweets highlight factors that health and government organisations should consider when creating visual health messages for Twitter. However, that more tweets used the emotive medium of photographs often combined with health loss framing raises concerns about persuasive tactics. More research is needed to understand the implications of framing and its impact on public perceptions and behaviours.
| S-EPMC8079223 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThe novel coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage communities across the United States. Opinion surveys identified the importance of political ideology in shaping perceptions of the pandemic and compliance with preventive measures.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to measure political partisanship and antiscience attitudes in the discussions about the pandemic on social media, as well as their geographic and temporal distributions.MethodsWe analyzed a large set of tweets from Twitter related to the pandemic, collected between January and May 2020, and developed methods to classify the ideological alignment of users along the moderacy (hardline vs moderate), political (liberal vs conservative), and science (antiscience vs proscience) dimensions.ResultsWe found a significant correlation in polarized views along the science and political dimensions. Moreover, politically moderate users were more aligned with proscience views, while hardline users were more aligned with antiscience views. Contrary to expectations, we did not find that polarization grew over time; instead, we saw increasing activity by moderate proscience users. We also show that antiscience conservatives in the United States tended to tweet from the southern and northwestern states, while antiscience moderates tended to tweet from the western states. The proportion of antiscience conservatives was found to correlate with COVID-19 cases.ConclusionsOur findings shed light on the multidimensional nature of polarization and the feasibility of tracking polarized opinions about the pandemic across time and space through social media data.
| S-EPMC8204937 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundHIV remains a persistent health problem in the United States, especially among women. Approved in 2012, HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a daily pill or bimonthly injection that can be taken by individuals at increased risk of contracting HIV to reduce their risk of new infection. Women who are at risk of HIV face numerous barriers to HIV services and information, underscoring the critical need for strategies to increase awareness of evidence-based HIV prevention methods, such as HIV PrEP, among women.ObjectiveWe aimed to identify historical trends in the use of Twitter hashtags specific to women and HIV PrEP and explore content about women and PrEP shared through Twitter.MethodsThis was a qualitative descriptive study using a purposive sample of tweets containing hashtags related to women and HIV PrEP from 2009 to 2022. Tweets were collected via Twitter's API. Each Twitter user profile, tweet, and related links were coded using content analysis, guided by the framework of the Health Belief Model (HBM) to generate results. We used a factor analysis to identify salient clusters of tweets.ResultsA total of 1256 tweets from 396 unique users were relevant to our study focus of content about PrEP specifically for women (1256/2908, 43.2% of eligible tweets). We found that this sample of tweets was posted mostly by organizations. The 2 largest groups of individual users were activists and advocates (61/396, 15.4%) and personal users (54/396, 13.6%). Among individual users, most were female (100/166, 60%) and American (256/396, 64.6%). The earliest relevant tweet in our sample was posted in mid-2014 and the number of tweets significantly decreased after 2018. We found that 61% (496/820) of relevant tweets contained links to informational websites intended to provide guidance and resources or promote access to PrEP. Most tweets specifically targeted people of color, including through the use of imagery and symbolism. In addition to inclusive imagery, our factor analysis indicated that more than a third of tweets were intended to share information and promote PrEP to people of color. Less than half of tweets contained any HBM concepts, and only a few contained cues to action. Lastly, while our sample included only tweets relevant to women, we found that the tweets directed to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) audiences received the highest levels of audience engagement.ConclusionsThese findings point to several areas for improvement in future social media campaigns directed at women about PrEP. First, future posts would benefit from including more theoretical constructs, such as self-efficacy and cues to action. Second, organizations posting on Twitter should continue to broaden their audience and followers to reach more people. Lastly, tweets should leverage the momentum and strategies used by the LGBTQ community to reach broader audiences and destigmatize PrEP use across all communities.
| S-EPMC10214116 | biostudies-literature
Project description: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.
| S-EPMC7188178 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has drawn attention to various inequalities in global societies, highlighting discrepancies in terms of safety, accessibility, and overall health. In particular, sex workers are disproportionately at risk due to the nature of their work and the social stigma that comes alongside it.ObjectiveThis study examines how public social media can be used as a tool of professional and personal expression by sex workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to explore an underresearched topic by focusing on sex workers' experiences with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on the social media platform Twitter. In particular, we aimed to find the main issues that sex workers discuss on social media in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsA literature review followed by a qualitative analysis of 1458 (re)tweets from 22 sex worker Twitter accounts was used for this study. The tweets were qualitatively coded by theme through the use of intercoder reliability. Empirical, experimental, and observational studies were included in this review to provide context and support for our findings.ResultsIn total, 5 major categories were identified as a result of the content analysis used for this study: concerns (n=542, 37.2%), solicitation (n=336, 23.0%), herd mentality (n=231, 15.8%), humor (n=190, 13.0%), and blame (n=146, 10.0%). The concerns category was the most prominent category, which could be due to its multifaceted nature of including individual concerns, health issues, concerns for essential workers and businesses, as well as concerns about inequalities or intersectionality. When using gender as a control factor, the majority of the results were not noteworthy, save for the blame category, in which sexual and gender minorities (SGMs) were more likely to post content.ConclusionsThough there has been an increase in the literature related to the experiences of sex workers, this paper recommends that future studies could benefit from further examining these 5 major categories through mixed methods research. Examining this phenomenon could recognize the challenges unique to this working community during the COVID-19 pandemic and potentially reduce the widespread stigma associated with sex work in general.
| S-EPMC9285671 | biostudies-literature
Project description:During national COVID-19 vaccine campaigns, people continuously engaged on Twitter to receive updates on the latest public health information, and to discuss and share their experiences. During this time, the spread of misinformation was widespread, which threatened the uptake of vaccines. It is therefore critical to understand the reasons behind vaccine misinformation and strategies to mitigate it. The current research aimed to understand the content of misleading tweets and the characteristics of their corresponding accounts. We performed a machine learning approach to identify misinformation in vaccine-related tweets, and calculated the demographic, engagement metrics and bot-like activities of corresponding accounts. We found critical periods where high amounts of misinformation coincided with important vaccine announcements, such as emergency approvals of vaccines. Moreover, we found Asian countries had a lower percentage of misinformation shared compared to Europe and North America. Our results showed accounts spreading misinformation had an overall 10% greater likelihood of bot activity and 15% more astroturf bot activity than accounts spreading accurate information. Furthermore, we found that accounts spreading misinformation had five times fewer followers and three times fewer verified badges than fact-sharing accounts. The findings of this study may help authorities to develop strategies to fight COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and improve vaccine uptake.
| S-EPMC10355402 | biostudies-literature
Project description:This study focuses on stigma communication about COVID-19 on Twitter in the early stage of the outbreak, given the lack of information and rapid global expansion of new cases during this period. Guided by the model of stigma communication, we examine four types of message content, namely mark, group labeling, responsibility, and peril, that are instrumental in forming stigma beliefs and sharing stigma messages. We also explore whether the presence of misinformation and conspiracy theories in COVID-19-related tweets is associated with the presence of COVID-19 stigma content. A total of 155,353 unique COVID-19-related tweets posted between December 31, 2019, and March 13, 2020, were identified, from which 7000 tweets were randomly selected for manual coding. Results showed that the peril of COVID-19 was mentioned the most often, followed by mark, responsibility, and group labeling content. Tweets with conspiracy theories were more likely to include group labeling and responsibility information, but less likely to mention COVID-19 peril. Public health agencies should be aware of the unintentional stigmatization of COVID-19 in public health messages and the urgency to engage and educate the public about the facts of COVID-19.
| S-EPMC7557581 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundBeing in the frontline of the battle against COVID-19, nurses need to be capable of stress management to maintain their physical and psychological well-being in the face of a variety of stressors. The present study aims to explore the challenges, strategies, and outcomes of stress management in nurses who face and provide care to COVID-19 patients.MethodsThe present study is a qualitative descriptive work that was conducted in teaching hospitals affiliated with Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Iran, from June 2020 to March 2021. Sixteen nurses who were in practice in units assigned to COVID-19 patients were selected via purposeful sampling. Data were collected through semi-structured, individual interviews conducted online. The collected data were analyzed using MAXQDA 10 according to the conventional content analysis method suggested by Graneheim and Lundman.ResultsThe data collected in the interviews resulted in 14 subcategories under 4 main categories: providing care with uncertainty and anxiety, facing psychological and mental tension, creating a context for support, and experiencing personal-professional growth.ConclusionsThe nurses caring for COVID-19 patients needed the support of their authorities and families to stress management. Providing a supportive environment through crisis management training, providing adequate equipment and manpower, motivating nurses to achieve psychological growth during the pandemic can help them manage stress.
| S-EPMC9112256 | biostudies-literature