School of Medicine, Universidad de Sonora, Hermosillo, Mexico.
Department of Geriatrics, Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición Salvador Zubirán, Tlalpan, Mexico.
J Am Geriatr Soc. 2020 Aug;68(8):1661-1665. doi: 10.1111/jgs.16508. Epub 2020 May 9.
In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) a pandemic. High morbidity and mortality rates of COVID-19 have been observed among older adults and widely reported in both mainstream and social media. The objective of this study was to analyze tweets related to COVID-19 and older adults, and to identify ageist content.
We obtained a representative sample of original tweets containing the keywords "elderly," "older," and/or "boomer" plus the hashtags "#COVID19" and/or "#coronavirus."
Tweets posted between March 12 and March 21, 2020.
We identified the type of user and number of followers for each account. Tweets were classified by three raters as (1) informative, (2) personal accounts, (3) personal opinions, (4) advice seeking, (5) jokes, and (6) miscellaneous. Potentially offensive content, as well as that downplaying the severity of COVID-19 because it mostly affects older adults, was identified.
A total of 18,128 tweets were obtained, of which a random sample of 351 was analyzed. Most accounts (91.7%) belonged to individuals. The most common types of tweets were personal opinions (31.9%), followed by informative tweets (29.6%), jokes/ridicule (14.3%), and personal accounts (13.4%). Overall, 72 tweets (21.9%) likely intended to ridicule or offend someone and 21.1% had content implying that the life of older adults was less valuable or downplayed the relevance of COVID-19.
Most tweets related to COVID-19 and older adults contained personal opinions, personal accounts, and jokes. Almost one-quarter of analyzed tweets had ageist or potentially offensive content toward older adults. J Am Geriatr Soc 68:1661-1665, 2020.
2020 年 3 月，世界卫生组织宣布 2019 年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）为大流行。老年人中 COVID-19 的发病率和死亡率较高，这在主流媒体和社交媒体上都有广泛报道。本研究的目的是分析与 COVID-19 和老年人相关的推文，并确定其中的年龄歧视内容。
我们获取了包含关键词“老年人”、“年长”和/或“婴儿潮一代”以及标签“#COVID19”和/或“#coronavirus”的原始推文的代表性样本。
2020 年 3 月 12 日至 3 月 21 日期间发布的推文。
我们确定了每个账户的用户类型和关注者数量。根据三位评估人员的分类，推文分为以下几类：（1）信息类，（2）个人账户，（3）个人观点，（4）寻求建议，（5）笑话，和（6）其他。识别出可能具有冒犯性的内容，以及淡化 COVID-19 严重性的内容，因为它主要影响老年人。
共获取 18128 条推文，其中随机抽取 351 条进行分析。大多数账户（91.7%）属于个人。最常见的推文类型是个人观点（31.9%），其次是信息类推文（29.6%）、笑话/嘲笑（14.3%）和个人账户（13.4%）。总体而言，72 条推文（21.9%）可能是为了嘲笑或冒犯他人，21.1%的推文内容暗示老年人的生命价值较低，或淡化了 COVID-19 的相关性。
与 COVID-19 和老年人相关的大多数推文都包含个人观点、个人账户和笑话。近四分之一的分析推文对老年人存在年龄歧视或可能具有冒犯性的内容。
