An exploration of Canadian government officials' COVID-19 messages and the public's reaction using social media data.

ABSTRACT: Governments can use social media platforms such as Twitter to disseminate health information to the public, as evidenced during the COVID-19 pandemic [Pershad (2018)]. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of Canadian government and public health officials' use of Twitter as a dissemination platform during the pandemic and to explore the public's engagement with and sentiment towards these messages. We examined the account data of 93 Canadian public health and government officials during the first wave of the pandemic in Canada (December 31, 2019 August 31, 2020). Our objectives were to: 1) determine the engagement rates of the public with Canadian federal and provincial/territorial governments and public health officials' Twitter posts; 2) conduct a hashtag trend ana

SUBMITTER: Kada A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9439209 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature