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Politics, Power and a Pandemic: Searching for Information and Accountability During a Twitter Infodemic

2021; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 16; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/19312431211057488

1931-244X

Benjamin R. LaPoe, Candi S. Carter Olson, Victoria LaPoe, Parul Jain, Allyson Woellert, Aaron Long,

Social Media and Politics

During the early weeks of the U.S. COVID-19 pandemic, society was battling an infodemic–defined as a “tsunami” of online misinformation. Through the lens of mediatization theory, this article examines 800,000 tweets to understand social media information and misinformation related to the COVID-19. Through multi-layered analysis, this article details prominent key words discussed on Twitter connected to pandemic trending hashtags in early-to-mid March 2020: #Covid19 and #Coronavirus. The most prominent word themes included: novelty of this virus and associated uncertainty and the spread of misinformation; severity and widespread reach of the virus; call for collective action; and expectations relative to government action. The article explains these findings through mediatization theory, applying how technology influences social media discussions.