Twitter’s impact during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic

Twitter’s impact during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic

Introduction

Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) has severely impacted the daily lives of individuals across the globe. The effects of the virus quickly took over the nation, with social media platforms seeing an influx of information about the disease being spread. According to Statista, the German company specializing in market and consumer data, Twitter usage increased by 78% due to the pandemic. 

The social networking site Twitter is a commonly used online media platform. It provides real-time information related to ongoing events concisely and captures the emotions and thoughts of the people. During this pandemic, politicians, health care workers, public health experts, and youth have used Twitter to express their feelings, opinions, emotions, and thoughts.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on January 30, 2020. All the biomedical experts worldwide were relentlessly trying to control the disease and find possible cures for this viral infection.

As the cases spread over the nation, the government declared a lockdown for all citizens starting on March 15, 2020. During the isolation that followed this announcement, people took to social media to express their thoughts, which led to questions about the virus.

Some of the more common questions included:

  • How does the virus spread? 
  • How can I protect myself and others from contracting the virus?
  • Why do I have to wear a face mask?

While the CDC and other government agencies did their best to inform the public about the virus, most took to social media to get quick updates about the pandemic.

My analysis of six official Florida university Twitter accounts during the start of the pandemic back in 2020, shows that social media was a major communication vessel for institutions. The data shows that social media was relied upon to disseminate news regarding but not limited to, infections, masks, vaccines and other safety precautions. The 6,823 combined tweets presented the need for this platform to inform students in masses about the virus.

Research and Social Media

Pew Research analyzed social media activity in multiple countries as an essential source of health information. Sharing and consuming health information via social media has become prevalent during the pandemic.

In fact, according to a study by Pew Research, 53% of Americans who say they regularly get news from at least one of the ten social media sites were asked about their usage habits. Close to three-quarters say they have gotten a lot (30%) or some (43%) news and information about COVID-19 vaccines on social media. And about six in ten of this group (61%) say that social media is an important way of keeping up with news about COVID-19 vaccines, though just 11% say it is the most critical way.

 For young adults and college students specifically, the pandemic represents not just a national crisis but also a defining moment.

The pandemic marked one of the first generational pandemics in the country in recent decades, meaning the lasting effects (schooling, social life, and mental health). Students were forced to abandon their memories, their earning power, and their view of what it means to have a functional social life.

For example, two freshmen at USF shared what it was like to uproot their lives abruptly due to the virus and adapt to the new way of living.

Many students also took to social media to express their frustration with the current circumstances and look for answers to why things were different. 

A study found that during the early stages of the pandemic, specific stressors such as the lockdown and having to relocate to continue studies virtually had negative mental and physical health consequences. 

While some organizations such as news outlets and blogs adopted the “write first, ask questions later” approach, it became more critical for smaller outlets, especially educational institutions, to figure out a way to communicate with their students.

Some users highlighted the high severity and susceptibility of COVID-19: “It is way worse than flu,” “Has higher death rates than flu,” “It’s about the rate of mortality of the coronavirus which is what makes it more dangerous and also how infectious it is,” and “About 70% of the world population will get it.” Other tweets mentioned the adverse mental health impact of COVID-19.

The Sunshine State was one of the first to lower its restrictions in regard to the Covid-19 virus. In fact, in the middle of the fall 2020 semester for most students, Gov. Ron DeSantis said he is lifting all restrictions on businesses statewide that were imposed to control the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19. Most significantly, that means restaurants and other establishments could operate at full capacity.

Initially, this choice was met with pushback as universities and colleges who were going back to in-person learning in a limited capacity wanted to make sure they were adhering to CDC guidelines and keeping students safe. 

The decision led to many students looking for guidance through their respective institutions with more questions than answers.

“I felt blindsided by the sudden return to school, and looking for answers was my number one concern…I’d check social media religiously to see if our institution posted updates to give me some guidance on my next step,” LaMicah Lindsey, University of South Florida master’s student said.

Another key factor that played into the need for appropriate social media public communications between students and the major Florida universities was the Covid-19 rate in the state was breaking record highs. 

In fact, around July 12, 2020, the Sunshine State averaged nearly 10,000 new cases per day and reported a national record of 15,300 cases in a single day.

This record eclipsed the previous high of 12,274 in New York on April 4 amid the worst of its outbreak. Additionally, the New York Times reported that the surge in Florida reflects how the spread of the virus has escalated in much of the country, particularly in Southern states where governors following President Trump’s lead had pushed aggressively to ease restrictions and encourage businesses to reopen.

College guidelines during the pandemic

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released some guidelines in March 2020 for higher learning institutions looking for students to return to in-person learning.

The list was as follows:

The primary factors to consider include:

  • Level of community transmission of COVID-19
  • COVID-19 vaccination coverage in the community and among students, faculty, and staff
  • Strain on health system capacity within the community
  • Accessibility of COVID-19 viral testing resources for faculty, staff, and students
  • Use a COVID-19 viral screening testing program for faculty, students, and staff. Testing provides an essential layer of prevention, particularly in areas with moderate, substantial, or high community transmission levels.
  • COVID-19 outbreaks or increasing trends in the IHE or surrounding community

Careful planning can help IHEs decide on prevention strategies and steps to take to limit transmission, avoid outbreaks when possible, and contain outbreaks when they do occur.

Furthermore, the State University System Board of Governors released several statements throughout the pandemic, which helped guide the major universities’ decision-making. 

The first major update on March 6, 2020, with the board stating, “First and foremost, the health and safety of students within the State University System is our top priority. As we have continued to monitor the spread of the COVID-19 virus, it has become clear that proactive rather than reactive guidance to universities is necessary to protect the students and the residents of our state.”

During this time, the CDC reported the Covid-19 virus began to spread more throughout Florida. The data shows that the Sunshine State was reporting over 1,000 new cases per day by the end of March.

The board issued the following plan to higher learning institutions

University marketing data

Universities with students on campus- State universities with students who have returned from spring break, which includes Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida Polytechnic University, and the University of Florida, should implement a process to transition to remote instruction immediately and encourage students to return home for at least 2 weeks. 

Remote Instruction- All universities will make plans to transition to remote instruction as soon as possible.

This planning involves social media marketing from Florida’s major colleges and universities. 

The science of understanding health-related information that is distributed via a digital medium such as the internet or social media with the aim to inform public health and public policy is known as infodemiology.

 The term infoveillance, refers to syndromic surveillance of public health-related concerns that are expressed and diffused on the internet through digital channels. Infoveillance has been particularly useful for identifying outbreak patterns and studying public perceptions of several diseases like H1N1 and the Zika virus. 

“Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we knew that our department’s communications channels would be key in disseminating up-to-date information and guidelines to our USF audiences. Social media became an even more prominent go-to channel, especially once remote instruction/work began,”  said Ashley Rodrigues, USF social media assistant director.

The outbreak propelled an emergent set of studies that have examined public perceptions, thoughts, and concerns about this pandemic using social media data.

An article by Harvard found that social media spending has increased from 13.3% of marketing budgets in February 2020 to 23.2% in June 2020 — a 74% lift. 

The data behind this study suggests that social media marketing grew more during the pandemic, and those who used social sites for spreading information would need to be creative in their marketing efforts.

“The experience of providing much-needed information in direct and creative ways, gauging the frequency of those posts, alongside managing post fatigue in the social media space was a big learning curve – it’s so important to try and strike that balance as best as possible. Maintaining a positive, informative, and transparent social media connection with our audiences is always a priority. I think we were able to provide that as best we could during the pandemic,”  Rodrigues concluded.

To choose which Florida institutions I wanted to observe, I took a look at the areas in the state where the most Covid-19 hotspots were located. According to the CDC and John Hopkins University, North and South Florida were hotbeds for the virus.

Twitter data analysis

To analyze the tweets, I used Twitter’s API playground and collected all tweets from each university from Jan 1, 2020, to Dec 31, 2020. After doing so, a database was created to put the full display of tweets that would allow me to search by specific keywords from each institution.

Twitter accounts were analyzed from the following universities:

Florida State University

University of South Florida

Florida Atlantic University

University of North Florida

University of Florida

University of Miami

The accounts’ tweets were studied from  Jan 1, 2020, to Dec 31, 2020. The keywords that were looked for within the database were health, masks, vaccine and covid. 

In order to do this, the search feature of the database was used to search up Covid-related words and phrases and group each set of tweets within Google sheets to break it down further.  doing, so, there was an expectation for a large percentage of tweets from universities in hotter Covid-19 areas. 

Data from the CDC shows that the age range that was reporting the newest covid cases within the state was around the typical college student age.

In total, a combined 6,832 tweets from the institutions were looked at through the database. Florida State University led the way for the group with 1,265 in 2020.

Twitter data breakdown by County

Florida Atlantic University saw both the lowest number of tweets for the start of the pandemic and the fewest tweets related to the pandemic.

Using data from the John Hopkins University of Medicine I analyzed how Covid-19 cases among young adults correlated with the tweets from the respective university.

Throughout Leon County, where FSU is located, there were over 86,000 confirmed cases throughout the year of 2020. The data shows that half of those infected were around the average age of a freshman in college. FSU’s Twitter account primarily focused on tweets about safety with 86% of its pandemic-related material being focused on Covid and staying safe. The social media team even created a graphic for students to support them during the pandemic.

In USF’s Hillsborough County there were nearly 380,000 cases as Tampa was one of the hotspots for the virus during 2020. However, the infection trend for college-age students was much lower than at FSU. As such, USF’s Twitter account had only 21% of its pandemic-related tweets about Covid or health registered.

The university also had some tweets that encouraged students to not wear masks, but after more information about the virus became present the tone of the social media changed.

Palm Beach County, which houses FAU, had over 370,000 cases with younger people accounting for over 170,000 of these reported cases. However, despite this statistic, FAU’s presence on Twitter was the lowest among all the institutions.

Only 9% of FAU’s Twitter was about the pandemic. In fact, the university only had one tweet during the 2020 timespan about vaccines. Comparing this to the number of cases throughout the area it was a surprising discovery.

Duval County, home of UNF, saw 255,000 confirmed cases, with college-age students accounting for over 150,000 people contracting the virus. As the statistic reflects, nearly half of the people in this county who contracted the virus were young.

UNF’s social media only saw 13% of its tweets being related to the pandemic. The team also made only one tweet about vaccines, just like FAU.

UF’s Alachua County saw a number of reported cases among the six counties. This is in correlation with the North Central Florida area being a relatively cold spot for Covid-19 during 2020. However, cases within the college student age range saw over 40,000 reports. 

With that in mind, the UF Twitter account made 10% of its content focused on the pandemic. The account also rarely tweeted any information about the virus during the end of 2020.

Miami saw the most cases out of the chosen counties, with over 1 million reported infections. People around the college student age are the third most significant contributor to Covid-19 cases. The Twitter presence was much like USF’s in correlation with the high rates.

Miami’s main account showed that pandemic-related tweets accounted for 22% of its overall tweets. This trend seems to be more prevalent in hotter Covid-19 areas as all the institutions near the south and within Covid-19 hotspots did not have a big Twitter presence.

In order to determine which institution put out the most tweets during the pandemic that related to keywords from the virus, all of the tweets were gathered and put into a database to be analyzed.

Twitter account data comparison

Here’s how the institutions compared

The data shows that UM led the way for all institutions regarding tweets about the vaccine. This follows the previous Covid-19 trends shown by John Hopkins, as UM was a hotspot and superspreader during the pandemic’s start.

FAU made the slightest effort to put information about the pandemic on its platforms. Locally, USF, in retrospect, made 0.11 percent of its tweets about health and covid, which was surprising when you consider the number of cases reported in Hillsborough during this time.

Here’s the breakdown of the institution’s pandemic related tweets throughout 2020:

As COVID-19 affects millions of people worldwide, it’s vital to get themes, topics, sentiments, and changing trends regarding this pandemic among Twitter users. This could help out the management with marketing and allow them to get ahead of the pandemic curve, especially with the proper social media campaign. Additionally, looking at the percentage of tweets by these institutions can reveal a pattern of what needs to be done if a situation like this happens again.

Conclusion

 The next steps would be to examine the changing sentiments and trends surrounding various themes and topics, government agencies, health care organizations, businesses, and educational institutions to see how marking overall could be improved to increase awareness for the future.