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

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arxiv 2008.08364 v1 pith:5KR4XI6F submitted 2020-08-19 cs.SI

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

Kristina Gligori\'c , Manoel Horta Ribeiro , Martin M\"uller , Olesia Altunina , Maxime Peyrard , Marcel Salath\'e , Giovanni Colavizza , Robert West This is my paper
classification cs.SI
keywords duringaccountsauthoritiescovid-19crisisengagementexpertsinfodemic
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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Timely access to accurate information is crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prompted by key stakeholders' cautioning against an "infodemic", we study information sharing on Twitter from January through May 2020. We observe an overall surge in the volume of general as well as COVID-19-related tweets around peak lockdown in March/April 2020. With respect to engagement (retweets and likes), accounts related to healthcare, science, government and politics received by far the largest boosts, whereas accounts related to religion and sports saw a relative decrease in engagement. While the threat of an "infodemic" remains, our results show that social media also provide a platform for experts and public authorities to be widely heard during a global crisis.

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