JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the necessity of immediate crisis communication by authorities. In Germany, as in many other countries, people choose social media to get real-time information and subsumption of the pandemic and its consequences. Next to authorities, experts such as virologists and science communicators are very prominent in the German Twitter COVID-19 crisis communication.

Objective:

The aim of this research was to detect similarities and differences in the COVID-19 crisis communication on Twitter between public authorities and individual experts during the first year of the pandemic.

Methods:

Descriptive analysis and quantitative content analysis were carried out on a subsample of 8,251 original tweets from a much larger sample of COVID-19 tweets from January 1, 2020 to January 15, 2021. COVID-19 related tweets of 22 authorities and 18 experts were categorized into structural, content, and style components following previous Twitter crisis communication studies [1]. Negative binomial regressions were performed to evaluate tweet success via retweet and favorite counts of COVID-19-related tweets.

Results:

Descriptive statistics revealed that experts published more COVID-19 tweets than authorities, increasingly so over the period under study. Both groups had multiplicators, i.e., accounts whose tweets account for 5 % of COVID-19 tweets under study. The COVID-19 crisis communication experienced a very concentrated success (in terms of retweets) due to the dominance of COVID-19 influencers, with two experts and one authority being responsible for 70% of retweets. Experts’ tweets were also remarkably more successful; their COVID-19 tweets reached a sevenfold rate of retweeting and 13.9 times the favorite rate compared to that of authorities. Authorities’ tweets were much more designed with more structural and content components, e.g., 92% of authorities’ tweets use hashtags, while only 19% of experts’ COVID-19 tweets do so. Such structural elements reduce the success of the communication, and the incidence rate (IRR) of retweets for authorities’ tweets using hashtags is about 0.45 that of tweets without hashtags (z-value = -12.11). For experts, the IRR of retweets is 0.82 compared to when tweets carry hashtags (z-value = -2.82).

Conclusions:

Twitter data are a powerful information source and suitable for crisis communication in Germany. COVID-19 tweet activity mirrors the development of COVID-19 cases in Germany. Twitter users prefer communication by experts over that of authorities regarding COVID-19. Tweets have a higher coverage for both authorities and experts when they are plain and for authorities when they directly address people. For authorities, it appears that it was difficult to win recognition during COVID-19. Successful crisis communication on social media on the part of authorities might need updated standards.