JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Although past research focuses on how COVID-19 has been framed by the mainstream news media, such research may not accurately capture and represent the perspectives of people from diverse backgrounds. Additionally, public attention to the COVID-19 frames on social media has not been adequately explored in previous studies. The amount of public attention to frames can reflect how much effect they have had on public opinion.

Objective:

To fill the gap in the literature, this study identifies the frames about the COVID-19 pandemic in public discourse on Twitter, which voices diverse opinions. This study also investigates the amount of public attention the identified frames have received on Twitter.

Methods:

Twenty-two trending hashtags related to COVID-19 in the US and 694,582 tweets containing these hashtags written in English were collected and analyzed in March 2020 via thematic analysis. Public attention was measured by evaluating the amount of public engagement with frames (ranged from 0 to 1) and public adoption of those frames (ranged from 0 to1).

Results:

Nine frames were identified, including ‘public health guidelines,’ ‘quarantine life,’ ‘solidarity,’ ‘evidence and facts,’ ‘call for action,’ ‘politics,’ ‘post-pandemic life,’ ‘shortage panic,’ and ‘conflict.’ We found that the identified frames manifest the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic experienced by Twitter users. Results indicated that ‘call for action’ had the highest engagement score (0.68), followed by ‘conflict’ (0.67), and ‘evidence and facts’ (0.59). Additionally, ‘post-pandemic life’ had the highest adoption score (0.99) followed by ‘call for action’ (0.92), and ‘shortage panic’ (0.91).

Conclusions:

Results indicated that framing can be an effective tool to gauge the concerns and needs of citizens during public health emergencies. The typology of frames identified in this study could also be used to facilitate the communication of various aspects of COVID-19 on social media. The frames with greater public attention could possibly be more relevant to people’s concerns or interests. This study also contributes to the framing research by demonstrating that trending hashtags can be used as a new user-generated data source to identify and highlight frames in public discourse on social media.