Cutting Through the Noise: Predictors of Successful Online Message Retransmission in the First 8 Months of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

ABSTRACT: In this paper, we investigate how message construction, style, content, and the textual content of embedded images impacted message retransmission over the course of the first 8 months of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in the United States. We analyzed a census of public communications (n = 372,466) from 704 public health agencies, state and local emergency management agencies, and elected officials posted on Twitter between January 1 and August 31, 2020, measuring message retransmission via the number of retweets (ie, a message passed on by others), an important indicator of engagement and reach. To assess content, we extended a lexicon developed from the early months of the pandemic to identify key concepts within messages, employing it to analyze both the textual conte

SUBMITTER: Renshaw SL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9195492 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan-Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature