Gligorić, K., Ribeiro, M. H., Müller, M., Altunina, O., Peyrard, M., Salathé, M., ... & West, R. (2020). Experts and authorities receive disproportionate attention on Twitter during the COVID-19 crisis. arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.08364. https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.08364

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Twitter accounts associated with roles in Science, Healthcare, and Government & Politics received the most and largest boost in engagement. In general, Twitter users paid more attention to professional and authoritative accounts for information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Experts and authorities receive disproportionate attention on Twitter during the COVID-19 crisis

- Custom taxonomy of user account categories
- Sample of 14,200 Twitter counts each with at least one COVID-19-related tweet that received at least 10 retweets or likes 
- Tracked fraction of tweets with COVID-19 keywords
- Looked at whether accounts have changed tweeting patterns during the pandemic
- Measured engagement of each account and computed two rankings with respect to engagement and follower counts 

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