Hoque Misbah Ul, Lee Kisung, Beyer Jessica L, Curran Sara R, Gonser Katie S, Lam Nina S N, Mihunov Volodymyr V, Wang Kejin
Division of Computer Science and Engineering, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA.
The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
IEEE Access. 2022;10:72879-72894. doi: 10.1109/access.2022.3189670.
The abundance of available information on social media can provide invaluable insights into people's responses to health information and public health guidance concerning COVID-19. This study examines tweeting patterns and public engagement on Twitter, as forms of social media, related to public health messaging in two U.S. states (Washington and Louisiana) during the early stage of the pandemic. We analyze more than 7M tweets and 571K COVID-19-related tweets posted by users in the two states over the first 25 days of the pandemic in the U.S. (Feb. 23, 2020, to Mar. 18, 2020). We also qualitatively code and examine 460 tweets posted by selected governmental official accounts during the same period for public engagement analysis. We use various methods for analyzing the data, including statistical analysis, sentiment analysis, and word usage metrics, to find inter- and intra-state disparities of tweeting patterns and public engagement with health messaging. Our findings reveal that users in Washington were more active on Twitter than users in Louisiana in terms of the total number and density of COVID-19-related tweets during the early stage of the pandemic. Our correlation analysis results for counties or parishes show that the Twitter activities (tweet density, COVID-19 tweet density, and user density) were positively correlated with population density in both states at the 0.01 level of significance. Our sentiment analysis results demonstrate that the average daily sentiment scores of all and COVID-19-related tweets in Washington were consistently higher than those in Louisiana during this period. While the daily average sentiment scores of COVID-19-related tweets were in the negative range, the scores of all tweets were in the positive range in both states. Lastly, our analysis of governmental Twitter accounts found that these accounts' messages were most commonly meant to spread information about the pandemic, but that users were most likely to engage with tweets that requested readers take action, such as hand washing.
社交媒体上丰富的可用信息能够为了解人们对有关新冠疫情的健康信息及公共卫生指导的反应提供极有价值的见解。本研究考察了在疫情初期，作为社交媒体形式的推特上与美国两个州（华盛顿州和路易斯安那州）公共卫生信息相关的推文模式及公众参与情况。我们分析了美国疫情最初25天（2020年2月23日至2020年3月18日）这两个州用户发布的超过700万条推文以及57.1万条与新冠疫情相关的推文。我们还对同期选定政府官方账号发布的460条推文进行定性编码并检查，以进行公众参与分析。我们使用多种方法分析数据，包括统计分析、情感分析和词汇使用指标，以找出推文模式及公众对健康信息参与度的州际和州内差异。我们的研究结果显示，在疫情初期，就与新冠疫情相关推文的总数和密度而言，华盛顿州的推特用户比路易斯安那州的用户更活跃。我们对县或教区的相关分析结果表明，两个州的推特活动（推文密度、新冠疫情推文密度和用户密度）在0.01的显著水平上与人口密度呈正相关。我们的情感分析结果表明，在此期间，华盛顿州所有推文及与新冠疫情相关推文的每日平均情感得分始终高于路易斯安那州。虽然与新冠疫情相关推文的每日平均情感得分处于负面区间，但两个州所有推文的得分均处于正面区间。最后，我们对政府推特账号的分析发现，这些账号的信息最常旨在传播有关疫情的信息，但用户最有可能参与那些要求读者采取行动（如洗手）的推文互动。
