JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

As policy makers continue to shape the national and local responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, information they choose to share, and how they frame their content provides key insights to the public and healthcare systems.

Objective:

We examine the language used by the members of the U.S. House and Senate during the first ten months of the COVID-19 pandemic, measuring the content and sentiment based on the tweets they shared.

Methods:

We used Quorum to access more than 300,000 tweets posted by U.S. legislators from January 1 to October 10, 2020. We used differential language analyses to compare the content and sentiment of tweets posted by legislators by their party affiliation.

Results:

We find that Republican legislators use significantly more positive language compared to Democratic counterparts. While the themes in Democrat legislators focus on frontline healthcare workforce (Odds-Ratio, 2.25, p<0.001), healthcare access (OR 1.74, p<0. 001), and disparities across race (OR 1.38, p<0. 001), Republican legislators post more about initial and persistent vaccine progress (OR 1.51, p<0. 001), access to protective equipment (OR 1.22, p<0.05), and government expertise (OR 1.1, p<0. 001).

Conclusions:

Divergent language use on social media corresponds to the partisan divide in several months over the course of the public health crisis.