Leibowitz, M. K., Scudder, M. R., McCabe, M., Chan, J. L., Klein, M. R., Trueger, N. S., & McCarthy, D. M. (2021). Emergency Medicine Influencers’ Twitter Use During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed-methods Analysis. Western Journal of Emergency Medicine: Integrating Emergency Care with Population Health. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5bq5n5tf 

University of California, Berkeley

This is a mixed-methods study that looked at the messages of emergency medical (EM) Twitter users during the COVID-19 pandemic, characterizing themes, tones, viewpoints, and engagement. 

Emergency Medicine Influencers’ Twitter Use During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed-methods Analysis

They obtained a list of EM influencers from two published network analyses, and used a sample of 50 that meet the criteria of being on one of the lists, living in the United States, and having recognition within the EM Twitter community.

The George Washington University Libraries Tweetsets data platform was used to access the "Coronavirus Tweet IDs" dataset. From this dataset, tweets from their EM sample were extracted from the dates of March 3, 2020 to May 1, 2020. Only original tweets and quote tweets were extracted, not retweets and replies. They obtained a sample of 1315 tweets. 

Emergency Medicine Influencers’ Twitter Use During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed-methods Analysis Data Collection

This was a mixed methods paper, using both quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Emergency Medicine Influencers’ Twitter Use During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed-methods Analysis Methods

- Tweets were split almost evenly between original tweets and quote tweets
- median of 16 tweets per user
- engagement: median of 25 likes per tweet and 7 retweets per tweet
- most tweets were either positive (34.6%) or neutral (31%)
- 15% of tweets were negative
- most tweets focused on the present (76.7%)
- 34.4% of tweets shared links to news outlets talking about testing, cases, or other local stories
- 28.9% had information about patient care, protocols, or linked to research publications
- 18.1% provided advice or resources related to COVID-19
- 16.8% contained personal stories related to the pandemic
- 12.3% were political or related to government action

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