Retweets of officials’ alarming vs reassuring messages during the COVID-19 pandemic: Implications for crisis management

H. Raghav Rao, Naga Vemprala, Patricia Akello and Rohit Valecha

International Journal of Information Management, 2020, vol. 55, issue C

Abstract: Coronavirus related discussions have spiraled at an exponential rate since its initial outbreak. By the end of May, more than 6 million people were diagnosed with this infection. Twitter witnessed an outpouring of anxious tweets through messages associated with the spread of the virus. Government and health officials replied to the troubling tweets, reassuring the public with regular alerts on the virus's progress and information to defend against the virus. We observe that social media users are worried about Covid 19-related crisis and we identify three separate conversations on virus contagion, prevention, and the economy. We analyze the tone of officials’ tweet text as alarming and reassuring and capture the response of Twitter users to official communications. Such studies can provide insights to health officials and government agencies for crisis management, specifically regarding communicating emergency information to the public via social media for establishing reassurance.

Keywords: Covid-19; Coronavirus; Reassurance; Alarming; Twitter; Social media; Analytics; Government; Crisis management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026840122031029X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ininma:v:55:y:2020:i:c:s026840122031029x

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2020.102187

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Information Management is currently edited by Yogesh K. Dwivedi

More articles in International Journal of Information Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().