Abstract
At the end of 2019, COVID-19 (Coronavirus 2019) emerged in Wuhan, China, and spread rapidly worldwide. The use of virtual social networks, especially Twitter, has increased due to the present condition. The purpose of the present systematic literature review is to review the investigations on Twitter's role in the COVID-19 crisis. For this purpose, an appropriate search strategy was used to extract the studies conducted in the Web of Science and PubMed databases. In the end, 24 articles were reviewed. The results indicate that in the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, the content and tweets posted on Twitter were affected by this crisis, and various people such as the general public, health professionals, and politicians were sharing opinions, emotions, personal experience, and educational content about exposure to COVID-19 on this social media. Therefore, the speed of providing information to people has been one of the main advantages of Twitter during the crisis of COVID-19; however, the risk of using invalid information without scientific citation is also one of the most important concerns of using Twitter among people as well as health and governmental organizations. Thus, users should evaluate information accuracy more carefully and pay attention to the quality and validity of information before employing or sharing it. Governments and professionals can also prevent this disease's contagion even in similar future crises by employing Twitter correctly in the period of crisis and using the useful experience gained from applying social networks in the outbreak of COVID-19.
Highlights
COVID-19 viral disease (Coronavirus 2019) emerged in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and it quickly spread worldwide (Li et al, 2020); it is a severe problem for public health
The results indicate that in the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, the content and tweets posted on Twitter were affected by this crisis, and various people such as the general public, health professionals, and politicians were sharing opinions, emotions, personal experience, and educational content about exposure to COVID-19 on this social media
Due to the addressed issues and the importance of using social networks, especially Twitter, in the exchange of information and opinions among users, the purpose of the present review is to evaluate the role of social networks in the period of the COVID-19 crisis and its consequences
Summary
COVID-19 viral disease (Coronavirus 2019) emerged in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and it quickly spread worldwide (Li et al, 2020); it is a severe problem for public health. One way to control and prevent this disease's spread is staying at home, avoiding daily physical interactions, and living in home quarantine (Hou et al, 2020). This epidemic has affected many people's lives in different nations. With vast numbers of people pushed out of public places, there are already many social media discussions on these phenomena (Chen et al, 2020a). The discussion of COVID-19 has continued to extend as social
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have