Social Media Content Analysis Research Articles

Investigating Individuals' Perceptions Regarding the Context Around the Low Back Pain Experience: Topic Modeling Analysis of Twitter Data.

BackgroundLow back pain (LBP) remains the leading cause of disability worldwide. A better understanding of the beliefs regarding LBP and impact of LBP on the individual is important in order to improve outcomes. Although personal experiences of LBP have traditionally been explored through qualitative studies, social media allows access to data from a large, heterogonous, and geographically distributed population, which is not possible using traditional qualitative or quantitative methods. As data on social media sites are collected in an unsolicited manner, individuals are more likely to express their views and emotions freely and in an unconstrained manner as compared to traditional data collection methods. Thus, content analysis of social media provides a novel approach to understanding how problems such as LBP are perceived by those who experience it and its impact.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to identify contextual variables of the LBP experience from a first-person perspective to provide insights into individuals’ beliefs and perceptions.MethodsWe analyzed 896,867 cleaned tweets about LBP between January 1, 2014, and December 31, 2018. We tested and compared latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), Dirichlet multinomial mixture (DMM), GPU-DMM, biterm topic model, and nonnegative matrix factorization for identifying topics associated with tweets. A coherence score was determined to identify the best model. Two domain experts independently performed qualitative content analysis of the topics with the strongest coherence score and grouped them into contextual categories. The experts met and reconciled any differences and developed the final labels.ResultsLDA outperformed all other algorithms, resulting in the highest coherence score. The best model was LDA with 60 topics, with a coherence score of 0.562. The 60 topics were grouped into 19 contextual categories. “Emotion and beliefs” had the largest proportion of total tweets (157,563/896,867, 17.6%), followed by “physical activity” (124,251/896,867, 13.85%) and “daily life” (80,730/896,867, 9%), while “food and drink,” “weather,” and “not being understood” had the smallest proportions (11,551/896,867, 1.29%; 10,109/896,867, 1.13%; and 9180/896,867, 1.02%, respectively). Of the 11 topics within “emotion and beliefs,” 113,562/157,563 (72%) had negative sentiment.ConclusionsThe content analysis of tweets in the area of LBP identified common themes that are consistent with findings from conventional qualitative studies but provide a more granular view of individuals’ perspectives related to LBP. This understanding has the potential to assist with developing more effective and personalized models of care to improve outcomes in those with LBP.

Urban Collectives and insurgency to fight COVID-19: an analysis of social media content

The high incidences of COVID-19 cases in low-income communities, the context of disinformation around the disease and the vacuum of public policies have made low income communities more vulnerable to the pandemic. Considering that scenario, this paper analyzes how urban collectives have used social media to create and share narratives about COVID-19. We frame those contributions through a lens of insurgency, an area of planning studies that is based on grassroots counter-hegemonic actions. We conduct a sentiment and thematic analysis of Instagram posts of urban collectives in Fortaleza to show how social media has been appropriated as a space to cope with the virus and support insurgency. Our findings show, even though most strategies are geared towards emergency relief, collectives also harness the atmosphere of crisis brought by COVID-19 to raise awareness to other structural issues. Collectives promote insurgency by creating their own content, information and research material about COVID-19 in their communities and by partnering with institutions to scale up their claims.

A reflection on participatory research methodologies in the light of the COVID-19 – lessons learnt from the European Research Project TRIPS

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak has had considerable impacts on research projects, particularly those adopting participatory approaches. This paper reflects on the methodological adaptations employed by the European research project TRIPS to facilitate co-design and open innovation practices towards the development of accessible mobility solutions. The article reports how the methods were adapted to facilitate participatory research with almost no physical meetings. In doing so, the paper presents the alternative ‘distanced-based’ participatory approaches employed to engage users with disabilities and institutional stakeholders in the transport ecosystem, like online workshops, social media content analysis, online surveys and peer-to-peer telephone interviews. Lessons learnt and practical guidelines for distance-based participatory research are presented and discussed with the aim of increasing resilience in the light of future changes.

Nursing Perspectives on the Impacts of COVID-19: Social Media Content Analysis.

BackgroundNurses are at the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, nurses have faced an elevated risk of exposure and have experienced the hazards related to a novel virus. While being heralded as lifesaving heroes on the front lines of the pandemic, nurses have experienced more physical, mental, and psychosocial problems as a consequence of the COVID-19 outbreak. Social media discussions by nursing professionals participating in publicly formed Facebook groups constitute a valuable resource that offers longitudinal insights.ObjectiveThis study aimed to explore how COVID-19 impacted nurses through capturing public sentiments expressed by nurses on a social media discussion platform and how these sentiments changed over time.MethodsWe collected over 110,993 Facebook discussion posts and comments in an open COVID-19 group for nurses from March 2020 until the end of November 2020. Scraping of deidentified offline HTML tags on social media posts and comments was performed. Using subject-matter expert opinions and social media analytics (ie, topic modeling, information retrieval, and sentiment analysis), we performed a human-in-a-loop analysis of nursing professionals’ key perspectives to identify trends of the COVID-19 impact among at-risk nursing communities. We further investigated the key insights of the trends of the nursing professionals’ perspectives by detecting temporal changes of comments related to emotional effects, feelings of frustration, impacts of isolation, shortage of safety equipment, and frequency of safety equipment uses. Anonymous quotes were highlighted to add context to the data.ResultsWe determined that COVID-19 impacted nurses’ physical, mental, and psychosocial health as expressed in the form of emotional distress, anger, anxiety, frustration, loneliness, and isolation. Major topics discussed by nurses were related to work during a pandemic, misinformation spread by the media, improper personal protective equipment (PPE), PPE side effects, the effects of testing positive for COVID-19, and lost days of work related to illness.ConclusionsPublic Facebook nursing groups are venues for nurses to express their experiences, opinions, and concerns and can offer researchers an important insight into understanding the COVID-19 impact on health care workers.

Alexei Navalny and Protests in Russia: Growth of Online Activism Under the Authoritarian System

This article problematizes the nature of the protests that outbroke in Russia following the arrest of the opposition activist Alexei Navalny in January 2021. Under the conditions of mass action ban and COVID-19 pandemic, the scope of the rallies make them the biggest mass action in the history of Russia after 1991. This article seeks to discuss the nature of the rallies as a form of civic activism as well as their capacity to liberalize Russian regime. Furthermore, this article aims to discuss the role of digital media during the protests. The article argues that the scope of the rallies, reliance on youth, online mobilization structure and thoroughly organized anatomy indicate that they have potential for regime change in future as it could be seen in the case of color revolutions in 2000s. At the same time, it is argued that in Russia, online activism is growing as a response to sovereignization of the Internet. This article relies on the qualitative research methodology. Data collection techniques include literature review on social activism and online media; study of Russian legislation; analysis of social media content; and examination of January events’ media coverage.

Implementing Social Media

Social media is an important avenue for information dissemination and public communication in emergency management. Through social media content analysis and in-depth interviews, this study explores how county level emergency management agencies use their Facebook pages to communicate with the public, using Hurricane Matthew as a case study. The findings reveal some areas of congruence between literature and practitioner experience. The results suggest that public agencies integrate flexible social media strategies, which emphasize one-way communication when the public expects larger volumes of information and directions, and two-way communication when the public might have individualized needs. Furthermore, the findings show that visual content (e.g. pictures) are more likely to garner higher levels of public engagement on Facebook. Last, the study provides several practical suggestions for content creation and interaction on social media for emergency purposes.

Content Analysis of Social Media: Public and Government Response to COVID-19 Pandemic in Indonesia

Nowadays, the use of social media to analyze disaster responses has become important. However, its application to support decision-making by the Government during disasters still present significant challenges. This article offers a complete analysis of the response of the public and the Government in dealing with the COVID-19 Pandemics in Indonesia. The content analysis uses to analyze the tweet post on Twitter to determine the public and government response. Data was collected from public and government tweets on Twitter and producing 11,578 community tweets from the public and 958 tweets from the government account. This data was collected from 2nd March until 15th April 2020. Public comments are sorted into six categories of comments, that is fate, logic, government mention, worry, scientist, and impression, while sentiments are classified as positive, negative, and neutral. Government comments are sorted into eight categories, namely information, education, operating, warnings, resources provision, volunteer recruitment, and rumors management. The results showed that the public encourages and supports the Government to cope with a pandemic think rationally and logically in dealing with this Pandemic. In addition, the study indicates that the Government has not used social media as a medium for communicating with the public. The quality of government response is not good, especially in the categories of information on operations, warnings, resources provision, recruitment of volunteers, and rumors management. The implication of this study suggests how the data might be useful for the Government in delivering information during the Pandemic.

Covid-19 ile İlişkili Türkçe Sosyal Medya Paylaşımlarının İçerik Analizi

A remarkable increase has currently been happening in social media platform content related to COVID-19. Users have created large volumes of content on various topics over a short time, interacting with people in real-time. This also has transformed social media into an indispensable information source for any crisis. This study aims to explore the information content on COVID-19 disseminated through social media and to discover prominent topics in shares on COVID-19. In this regard, we have retrieved 17,542 tweets shared in Turkish. A content analysis of social media shares has been carried out, with latent semantic indexing and network analyses being performed to detect the relationships and interactions among shares. As a result, the most shared topics have been concluded to be on yasak [lockdown], tedbir [precaution], karantina [quarantine], and vaka [case], with communication being frequently passed using this semantic string and information exchanges being faster within the network. In addition, shares related to hygiene, masks, and distancing were determined to have occurred less than shares related to precautions, rules, cases, and lockdowns. The number of likes and retweets for content with social propaganda such as #evdekal [stayathome], #evdehayatvar [lifeathome], and #birliktebaşaracağız [togetherwesucceed] were low and not found in a semantic string. This suggests social propaganda through social media to have had a limited impact on epidemic management. In conclusion, identifying the prominent issues in social media posts and the characteristics of social media networks will help decision-makers determine appropriate policies for controlling and preventing the pandemic’s spread.

CARING FOR OUR PEOPLE: INDIGENOUS RESPONSES TO COVID-19 ERA INFORMATIC COLONIALISM

Based on qualitative and quantitative analyses, activist work and HCI approaches, these papers show how organizations formed partnerships to curate information resources, and deploy community Wi-Fi and Internet infrastructure across southwest US Indigenous communities during the most challenging months of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. For Native Americans this means ideating while navigating colonial inequality. Through an investigation of sociotechnical interdependencies across a broadband network cooperative, tribes, and university labs, an HCI team reflects on how relational stability sustains fragile Internet ecologies stretched to capacity by the needs of users deeply affected by COVID-19 in New Mexico and Arizona. Through an autoethnography of community-centered digital solutions for Navajo Nation, a member of the Nation considers how the role of K’é informs a system of infrastructural care in a nation struggling with high rates of infection and systemic lack of adequate infrastructure. Through an advocacy-oriented analysis of social media content, a Diné and Lakota social media scholar discerns the relationship between community enforcement of social distancing, the loss of interpersonal interaction, mutual aid, and the impact of public health memes for the Navajo Nation. Through radical librarianship practices, a Tohono O’odham librarian and artist counteracts the values of ‘information neutrality’ shaping whiteness-centering American librarianship by generating a community-curated solution to actionable information about COVID-19 for Indigenous communities. This panel models decolonial liberation rooted in responsiveness across mediated layers of Indigenous belonging. The authors express Indigenous interpretations of collective autonomy vis-a-vis strategic Internet assemblages, and particularly, how an Indigenous ethics of care intersects with the dream of an Internet for social good.

Twitter, Telepractice, and the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Social Media Content Analysis.

Purpose Telepractice was extensively utilized during the COVID-19 pandemic. Little is known about issues experienced during the wide-scale rollout of a service delivery model that was novel to many. Social media research is a way to unobtrusively analyze public communication, including during a health crisis. We investigated the characteristics of tweets about telepractice through the lens of an established health technology implementation framework. Results can help guide efforts to support and sustain telehealth beyond the pandemic context. Method We retrieved a historical Twitter data set containing tweets about telepractice from the early months of the pandemic. Tweets were analyzed using a concurrent mixed-methods content analysis design informed by the nonadoption, abandonment, scale-up, spread, and sustainability (NASSS) framework. Results Approximately 2,200 Twitter posts were retrieved, and 820 original tweets were analyzed qualitatively. Volume of tweets about telepractice increased in the early months of the pandemic. The largest group of Twitter users tweeting about telepractice was a group of clinical professionals. Tweet content reflected many, but not all, domains of the NASSS framework. Conclusions Twitter posting about telepractice increased during the pandemic. Although many tweets represented topics expected in technology implementation, some represented phenomena were potentially unique to speech-language pathology. Certain technology implementation topics, notably sustainability, were not found in the data. Implications for future telepractice implementation and further research are discussed.

A Content Analysis of Social Media Posts among Recreational Cyclists: A Gender Perspective

Recreational cyclists are pertinent but rarely studied leisure and tourism segment. Recreational cycling has traditionally been considered as a ‘masculine stereotyped’ sport. The purpose of the research is to better understand a gendered consumer view of recreational cycling and to possibly promote recreational cycling to women and men in countries like South Africa with keen interests of recreational cycling in the form of sport tourism. This research employs a content analysis of social media posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter as a research method. Specifically, the gendered nature of recreational cycling is focused upon. In total, 2,504 posts from 1,598 unique authors from South Africa are analysed. As a result, this research shows that in the South African context male cyclists tend to like to attend the specialised event and race for their health and fitness while female cyclists seem to find more enjoyable and family-friendly (children focused) cycling. The results also confirm the paradox that women are generally presented in more family oriented roles, while men are typically shown as more independent in the media. Managerial implications and future research are also presented.

Social Media Content Analysis and Classification Using Data Mining and ML

Students' natural conversations on social media such as Twitter and Whatsapp are useful to understand their learning experiences feelings. Collecting and analyzing data from such media can be a difficult task. However, the large scale of data is required for automatic data analysis techniques to classify Twitter data. The proposed new system is a combination of qualitative analysis and large-scale data mining and ML techniques. This system focuses on engineering students' Twitter posts, which are collected from engineering colleges, to understand issues and problems in their learning. The authors first conduct a qualitative analysis using ML studio on tweets collected from engineering colleges using term #DStudentsproblems, engineeringProblem, Aluminisuggestions, and ladyEngineer. Collected tweets are related to engineering students' college lives. In the proposed system, a multi-label classification algorithm to classify tweets reflecting students' problems such as soft skill issues, heavy study load, lack of social engagement, and sleep problems is used.

An Evolutionary Clustering Analysis of Social Media Content and Global Infection Rates During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This study investigates the impact of global infection rates on social media posts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study analysed over 179 million tweets posted between March 22 and April 13, 2020 and the global COVID-19 infection rates using evolutionary clustering analysis. Results showed six clusters constructed for each term type, including three-level [Formula: see text]-grams (unigrams, bigrams and trigrams). The frequent occurrences of unigrams (“COVID-19”, “virus”, “government”, “people”, etc.), bigrams (“COVID 19”, “COVID-19 cases”, “times share”, etc.) and trigrams (“COVID 19 crisis”, “things help stop” and “trying times share”) were identified. The results demonstrated that the unigram trends on Twitter were up to about two times and 54 times more common than the bigram terms and trigram terms, respectively. Unigrams like “home” or “need” also became important as these terms reflected the main concerns of people during this period. Taken together, the present findings confirm that many tweets were used to broadcast people’s prevalent topics of interest during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the results indicate that the number of COVID-19 infections had a significant effect on all clusters, being strong on 86% of clusters and moderate on 16% of clusters. The downward slope in global infection rates reflected the start of the trending of “social distancing” and “stay at home”. These findings suggest that infection rates have had a significant impact on social media posting during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The landscape of schizophrenia on twitter

IntroductionPeople with schizophrenia experience higher levels of stigma compared with other diseases. The analysis of social media content is a tool of great importance to understand the public opinion toward a particular topic.ObjectivesThe aim of this study is to analyse the content of social media on schizophrenia and the most prevalent sentiments towards this disorder.MethodsTweets were retrieved using Twitter’s Application Programming Interface and the keyword “schizophrenia”. Parameters were set to allow the retrieval of recent and popular tweets on the topic and no restrictions were made in terms of geolocation. Analysis of 8 basic emotions (anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise, and trust) was conducted automatically using a lexicon-based approach and the NRC Word-Emotion Association Lexicon.ResultsTweets on schizophrenia were heterogeneous. The most prevalent sentiments on the topic were mainly negative, namely anger, fear, sadness and disgust. Qualitative analyses of the most retweeted posts added insight into the nature of the public dialogue on schizophrenia.ConclusionsAnalyses of social media content can add value to the research on stigma toward psychiatric disorders. This tool is of growing importance in many fields and further research in mental health can help the development of public health strategies in order to decrease the stigma towards psychiatric disorders.

Social media content analysis on twitter to explore public perceptions regarding pathological social withdrawal (hikikomori)

Hikikomori is a form of severe social withdrawal, initially described in Japan and recently reported in other countries around the world. Individuals with hikikomori shut themselves in their homes with minimal interaction with society and little participation in school or the workforce. The nature of hikikomori makes the individuals suffering it a hard-to-reach population. While hikikomori was described in Japan much before the ‘digital revolution’ of the 2000s, the internet, social media, and online gaming have radically changed the way people interact. This may be particularly true among hikikomori who spend much time online for entertainment or social interaction. Given this, the online world has been proposed as an accessible gateway to reach and support individuals with hikikomori. This talk will present and discuss the results of the Twitter-hikikomori international studies, conducted between 2018-2020 and led by Dr. Pereira-Sanchez, which employed social media mixed quantitative-method analyses to characterize the public conversations related to hikikomori on the social media platform Twitter in several Western languages and Japanese. As for the results, Twitter data provided evidence that hikikomori extends well beyond Japan examining, and showed that tweets in Japanese are more often are related to personal anecdotes, whereas tweets in Western languages are more often related to hikikomori as a medical issue. Apart from the results of the content analyses studies have been a proof of concept on the use of social media contents to investigate a phenomenon affecting a hard-to-reach population, which may inspire future online-based efforts to better support these populations.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

Understanding public opinion regarding organ donation in China: A social media content analysis.

Organ donation provides a life-saving opportunity for patients with organ failure. China, like most countries, is faced with organ shortages. Understanding public opinion regarding organ donation in China is critical to ensure an increased donation rate. Our study explored public concerns and attitudes toward organ donation, factors involved, and how the public pays attention to organ donation. Sixteen million users' public information (i.e. gender, age, and geographic information) and posts from January 2017 to December 2017 were collected from Weibo, a social media platform. Of these, 1755 posts related to organ donation were included in the analysis. We categorized the posts and coded the users' attitudes toward organ donation and the associations between the demographics. The most popular posts mentioning organ donation were "publicly expressing the willingness to donate organs." Furthermore, 87.62% of posts exhibited a positive attitude toward organ donation, whereas only 7.44% exhibited a negative attitude. Most positive posts were "saluting the organ donors," and most negative posts involved "fear of the family's passive medical decision." There was no significant gender difference in the users' attitudes, but older people generally had a more negative attitude. Users with negative attitudes mainly distrust the medical system and are worried that the donated organs may be used in improper trading. Social media may be an important channel for promoting organ donation activities, and it is important to popularize scientific knowledge related to organ donation in order to eliminate the public's misunderstanding of organ donation and transplantation.

Идеологическая последовательность и идеологическая война: американский фашизм против антифашизма, январь 2021 г.

This work analyzes the ideological war between American fascists and antifascists and the relation between the existence of an ideological consistency among the masses and the emergence of this type of conflict. The storming of the US Capitol in January 2021 by fascists and the activities of fascists and antifascists on social media serve as subjects for the analysis of this ideological war. The purpose of this work is to study literature on ideological wars and analyze how States encourage extremist ideologies based on their own ideological consistencies. The method employed to expose the ideological war is a content analysis of social media used by the Proud Boys and Atlanta Antifascists. The results show that the two competing ideologies cannot coexist peacefully in the same territory and at the same time. The State and the elites agree that the confrontation should end. This work can be useful for academics, policy makers and students working on the issue of fascist and extremist ideologies, as well as for developing ways to fight these ideologies by addressing their enablers.

The influence of social media on the formation of financially literate behavior of youth

The Internet in the modern world is an integral part of the formation of culture and educational potential of society. The relevance of studying its influence on the individual and social strata of society is determined by its structural and functional capabilities: in fact, it becomes an institution for socialization of new generations, also actively embedded into educational systems. However, in terms of science it is important to understand what influence the Internet has on the formation of basic values, cultural characteristics, attitudes among young people, particularly in the field of financial behavior, which will form the basis of their economic activities and their common future. In this connection, the purpose of this study is an attempt to substantiate the role and influence of social media on the formation of models of financially competent behavior of young people (using the example of Moscow as the leading financial center). The main research methods were content analysis of social media, in particular the social network Instagram (analysis of the content of bloggers positioning themselves as experts in the field of financial management), as well as a mass survey of young people (carried out as part of the initiated by author project of the Laboratory for Study of Behavioral Economics at ISESP FCTAS RAS under the title "Financial culture of the capital's youth") and in-depth structured interviews with experts in the field of financial market and financial behavior. The results of the study make it possible to suggest the existence of a serious influence on the formation of financial culture and financial behavior of young people of the ontent that is popular in social media, as well as the popularity of social networks themselves as a source for the «extraction» of information in the field of economics and finance. This should be taken into account when developing a policy regarding social media activities, in particular bloggers in the field of educational, consulting, commercial and other activities related to increasing financial literacy, culture and formation of various models of financial behavior of young people for the purpose of legal regulation of such activities, because the broadcast content directly shapes not only the way of thinking, but also influences the practical choices and daily activities of young people.

Exploring the extent of digital food and beverage related content associated with a family-friendly event: a case study

BackgroundExposure to unhealthy food and beverage content is a contributing factor to the obesity epidemic. Youth are susceptible to unhealthy digital food marketing including content shared by their peers, which can be as influential as commercial marketing. Current Canadian regulations do not consider the threat digital food marketing poses to health. No research to date has examined the prevalence of food related posts on social media surrounding family-friendly events. The aim of this study was to explore the frequency of food related content (including food marketing) and the marketing techniques employed in social media posts related to a family-friendly event in Canada.MethodsIn this case study, a content analysis of social media posts related to a family-friendly event on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram was conducted between January to February 2019. Each post containing food related content was identified and categorized by source and food category using a coding manual. Marketing techniques found in each food related post were also assessed.ResultsA total of 732 food and beverage related posts were assessed. These posts were most commonly promoted through Instagram (n = 561, 76.6%) with significantly more individual users (61.5%; p < 0.05) generating food and beverage related content (n = 198, 27%) than other post sources. The top most featured food category was fast food (n = 328, 44.8%) followed by dine-in restaurants (n = 126, 17.2%). The most frequently observed marketing techniques included predominantly featuring a child in the post (n = 124, 16.9%; p < 0.0001), followed by products intended for children (n = 118, 16.1%; p < 0.05), and the presence of family (n = 57, 7.8%; p < 0.0001).ConclusionsThe present study highlights the proliferation of unhealthy food and beverage content by individuals at a family-friendly event as well as the presence of food marketing. Due to the unfettered advertising found in digital spaces, and that they are largely unregulated, it is important for future policies looking to combat childhood obesity to consider incorporating social media into their regulations to safeguard family-friendly events. General awareness on the implications of peer to peer sharing of unhealthy food and beverage posts should also be considered.

The Timing, Nature and Extent of Social Media Marketing by Unhealthy Food and Drinks Brands During the COVID-19 Pandemic in New Zealand.

Background: Concerns have been raised that health and societal causes surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic were misappropriated by companies to promote their unhealthy products to vulnerable populations during a time of increased stress and hardship (i.e., COVID-washing). Social media is a common medium for unhealthy foods and beverage marketing due to lack of regulation and low levels of monitoring.Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the timing, nature and extent of COVID-washing on public social media accounts by New Zealand's major food and drink brands in the initial stage of the pandemic after the first case was detected in New Zealand and when stay-at-home lockdown restrictions (Level 4 and 3 Alert levels) were in place.Methods: A content analysis of social media posts from February to May 2020 by the twenty largest confectionery, snacks, non-alcoholic beverages, and quick-service restaurant (fast-food) brands was undertaken. COVID-19 related posts were identified and classified to investigate the timing, themes and engagement with social media marketing campaigns, flagging those that may breach New Zealand's Advertising Standards.Results: 14 of 20 unhealthy food and drink brands referenced COVID-19 in posts during the 4-month period, peaking during nationwide lockdown restrictions. Over a quarter of all posts by the 14 brands (n = 372, 27.2%) were COVID-19 themed. Fast-food brands were most likely to use COVID-19 themed posts (n = 251/550 posts, 46%). Fast-food brands also had the highest number of posts overall during the pandemic and the highest engagement. The most commonly-used theme, present in 36% of all social media posts referring to COVID-19, was to draw on feelings of community support during this challenging time. Suggesting brand-related isolation activities was also common (23%), and the message that “consumption helps with coping” (22%). Six posts were found to potentially breach one of New Zealand's advertising standards codes by promoting excessive consumption or targeting children.Conclusion: COVID-washing was used by unhealthy food and drinks brands to increase brand loyalty and encourage consumption. The current Advertising Standards system is ineffective and must be replaced with a government-led approach to effectively regulate social media advertising to protect all New Zealanders, particularly in times of crisis.