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

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. T...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Electronic news (Mahwah, N.J.) N.J.), 2022-03, Vol.16 (1), p.30-53
Main Authors: LaPoe, Benjamin R., Carter Olson, Candi S., LaPoe, Victoria L., Jain, Parul, Woellert, Allyson, Long, Aaron
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1931-2431
1931-244X
DOI:10.1177/19312431211057488