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Analysis of pharmaceutical companies’ social media activity during the COVID-19 Pandemic and its impact on the public
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Gyftopoulos, Sotirios, Drosatos, George, Fico, Giuseppe, Pecchia, Leandro and Kaldoudi, Eleni (2024) Analysis of pharmaceutical companies’ social media activity during the COVID-19 Pandemic and its impact on the public. Behavioral Sciences, 14 (2). 128. doi:10.3390/bs14020128 ISSN 2076-328X.
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Official URL: http://doi.org/10.3390/bs14020128
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic, a period of great turmoil, was coupled with the emergence of an “infodemic”, a state when the public was bombarded with vast amounts of unverified information from dubious sources that led to a chaotic information landscape. The excessive flow of messages to citizens, combined with the justified fear and uncertainty imposed by the unknown virus, cast a shadow on the credibility of even well-intentioned sources and affected the emotional state of the public. Several studies highlighted the mental toll this environment took on citizens by analyzing their discourse on online social networks (OSNs). In this study, we focus on the activity of prominent pharmaceutical companies on Twitter, currently known as X, as well as the public’s response during the COVID-19 pandemic. Communication between companies and users is examined and compared in two discrete channels, the COVID-19 and the non-COVID-19 channel, based on the content of the posts circulated in them in the period between March 2020 and September 2022, while the emotional profile of the content is outlined through a state-of-the-art emotion analysis model. Our findings indicate significantly increased activity in the COVID-19 channel compared to the non-COVID-19 channel while the predominant emotion in both channels is joy. However, the COVID-19 channel exhibited an upward trend in the circulation of fear by the public. The quotes and replies produced by the users, with a stark presence of negative charge and diffusion indicators, reveal the public’s preference for promoting tweets conveying an emotional charge, such as fear, surprise, and joy. The findings of this research study can inform the development of communication strategies based on emotion-aware messages in future crises.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Engineering > Engineering | ||||||
SWORD Depositor: | Library Publications Router | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Behavioral Sciences | ||||||
Publisher: | MDPI | ||||||
ISSN: | 2076-328X | ||||||
Official Date: | 9 February 2024 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 14 | ||||||
Number: | 2 | ||||||
Article Number: | 128 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.3390/bs14020128 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Re-use Statement: | ** Article version: VoR ** From MDPI via Jisc Publications Router ** History: received 06-12-2023; rev-recd 30-01-2024; collection 02-2024; accepted 06-02-2024; epub 09-02-2024. ** Licence for VoR version of this article: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ** Acknowledgements: This paper is based on research that was executed within the scope of the project “PandeVITA—Pandemic Virus Trace Application for the Effective Knowledge Transfer Between Science and Society Inside the Quadruple Helix Collaboration”. | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 3 May 2024 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 3 May 2024 | ||||||
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Contributors: |
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