When Citizens Report a Novel Virus: An Analysis of Social Media Discourse of the Covid-19 Pandemic among Nigeria's Facebook and Twitter Users
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31150/ajshr.v4i2.1929Keywords:
Covid-19, pandemic, social media, health information, posts, discourses, vaccines, Facebook, TwitterAbstract
The study explores the dynamics associated with the contents of the discourses on the COVID-19 pandemic by Nigeria's active Facebook and Twitter users. Data were extracted from the last 400 posts published on four Facebook pages and the corresponding comments, the top 500 tweets for each of the three hashtags (#Covid19, #SARS-Cov-2, and #Pandemic), and 200 tweets for #vaccine. The social impact in social media method was employed to analyse the contents of the messages after coding, and the social impact coverage SICOR was calculated. The discourses on the COVID-19 pandemic were discovered to be multifaceted. The nature of the COVID-19 pandemic social media discourses was mostly non-scientific, aggressive, and religiously textured. About 85.5% of the total sample analysed was non-evidential or could not be proven scientifically, with social impact coverage of just 7% on Facebook and 22% on Twitter. About 18.3% of the total sample analysed fell under the MISFA code, and they contained factually inaccurate, misleading, conspiratorial, or politicised messages to address the seriousness of the disease. This could serve as a barrier to medical management and increase political tension both within the affected countries and in international relations. The discourses that contain the potentials or real social impacts of health, on the other hand, are respectful and transformative, and are primarily from the government and health institutions. The study recommended that in situations like the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a need to increase social media literacy, provide strategies and instruments to check the reputation, consistency, and evidence of any information, and avoid self-confirmation based on assumptions or previous unchecked experience.
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