Exploring the influence of celebrities on public attitude towards the COVID-19 pandemic: Analysis of sentiment sharing on social media Summary Goals The COVID-19 pandemic has presented new opportunities for health communication, including an increase in public use of online media for health-related emotions . People have taken to social media to share feelings related to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we examine the role of social messages shared by People in the Public Eye (i.e., athletes, politicians, news personnel, etc.) in determining the general direction of public discourse. Methods We collected approximately 13 million tweets from January 1, 2020 to March 1, 2022. Sentiment was calculated for each tweet using a fitted DistilRoBERTa model, which was used to compare Twitter posts related to the COVID-19 vaccine ( tweets) that co-occurred with celebrity mentions. Results Our findings suggest that the presence of consistent patterns of emotional content that matched messages shared by celebrities during the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic influenced public opinion and greatly stimulated online public discourse. Discussion We showed that as the pandemic progressed, public sentiment shared on social media was shaped by risk perceptions, political ideologies, and often negatively shared health protective behaviors . Conclusion We argue that further analysis of the public response to various emotions shared by celebrities could provide insights into the role of sentiment sharing on social media in the prevention, control and containment of COVID-19 diseases and in response to future outbreaks. of diseases. |
Comments
Tweets from people in the public eye likely increasingly shaped negative public opinion about the COVID-19 pandemic as it progressed in the US, an analysis of sentiments expressed in social media posts suggests, published in the open access journal BMJ Health & Care Informatics .
In particular, posts shared by politicians and news anchors seemed to exert the most influence, the findings indicate.
Better analysis of social media activity could help officials and policymakers better combat misinformation/disinformation on these platforms and bolster prevention and control efforts, not only for COVID-19 but also for future disease outbreaks. , the researchers conclude.
People are increasingly turning to social media to share their thoughts and feelings about the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers say. And several studies have highlighted the persuasive nature of celebrities’ behavior and messages on public health issues.
Therefore, researchers wanted to find out if there could be a link between messages shared by athletes, politicians, news anchors and entertainers about COVID-19 and public sentiment and discourse about COVID-19 vaccines and vaccination. .
They collected around 13 million tweets posted between January 1, 2020 and March 1, 2022. The expressed sentiment was calculated for each tweet using a fine-tuned natural language processing model (DistilRoBERTa).
This was then compared to tweets about COVID-19 that also mentioned certain skeptics of the US COVID-19 vaccine in the public eye, in sports, media and politics.
These were Joe Rogan (commentator and podcaster); Tucker Carlson (television host); Nicki Minaj (rapper); Aaron Rodgers (footballer); Novak Djokovic (tennis player); Eric Clapton (singer and songwriter); Rand Paul (Republican senator); the late Phil Valentine (announcer); Donald Trump; Ted Cruz (Republican senator); Candace Owens (political commentator); and Ron DeSantis (Republican governor of Florida).
The final analysis was based on 45,255 tweets from 34,407 unique authors . The tweets contained a total of 16.32 million likes, up to a maximum of 70,228 for each one.
The findings suggest that although there were minor differences between the various groups of vaccine skeptics in the public eye, a broadly polarized negative tone emerged.
And the constant emotional content these celebrities shared about COVID-19 vaccines and vaccination during the first two years of the pandemic influenced public opinion and greatly stimulated public discourse online, the researchers say. Politicians were among the most influential people in the public eye.
“The public’s dissemination, reaction and engagement with posts made by politicians online was indicative of a strong level of influence , suggesting that politicians play a key role in ensuring the health of the population and should commit to promote health-protective behaviors rather than sensational falsehoods,” the researchers write.
Although sentiment about COVID-19 vaccines and vaccination in relation to news anchors varied during this period, overall, it was more negative than positive. And tweets referencing these media personalities tended to be associated with anti-vaccine controversy or death rather than news about vaccine development.
The news anchors’ posts recorded a total of 14,017 likes between them, leading the researchers to suggest that: "The large number of likes displayed on these tweets shows that a much larger number of users are involved in reading tweets and are therefore potentially influenced." for the content.”
The researchers suggest that their findings could help strengthen currently available surveillance tools for targeted health promotion, management of the ongoing pandemic, and preparation for the next crisis.
“As we have shown, messages shared by influential members of society can have considerable effects on the directionality of public emotions and shared health decision-making,” they write.
“Both negative and positive online social endorsement of prevention strategies, such as vaccination, are key to determining compliance and successful acceptance across the population.
“However, threats of the spread of misinformation and disinformation by those with influence can undermine programs that support protective measures such as vaccination.”
Public health bodies have a role to play in countering this, including working with those in the public eye to share more positive messages about vaccination, they suggest.
The researchers acknowledge certain limitations to their findings, including the well-known difficulties of correctly interpreting the tone of written language and the relatively small number of celebrities included in the analysis.
But they conclude: “as the pandemic progressed, public sentiment shared on social media was shaped by risk perceptions, political ideologies, and health-protective behaviors shared by people in the public eye .”
“ The risk of severe negative health outcomes increases with non-compliance with health-protective behavioral recommendations set by public health officials, such as vaccination, and our findings suggest that polarized messages from social elites may minimize these.” risks, unduly contributing to an increase in the spread of COVID-19.”
Final message
While slight differences in sentiment were noted between subgroups, a broadly polarized negative tone was established. We showed that as the pandemic progressed, public sentiment shared on social media was shaped by risk perceptions, political ideologies, and health protective behaviors. The risk of severe negative health outcomes increases with non-compliance with health-protective behavioral recommendations set by public health officials, such as vaccination, and our findings suggest that polarized messages from social elites may minimize these risks. , unduly contributing to an increase in the spread of COVID-19.
In particular, we believe that messages shared by politicians and news personnel could be more strongly correlated with public health events; however, more experiments are needed. In the future, we plan to further explore the correlation of shared sentiment with events during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the rollout of vaccines or the lifting of the mask mandate. Establishing a more complete correlation between sentiment sharing on social media and health outcomes could help revolutionize public health responses to future infectious disease outbreaks.
What does this study contribute? In our previous works, our team has successfully employed various natural language processing (NLP) models for sentiment sharing analysis on social media. Using a fine-tuned DistilRoBERTa NLP model, sentiment and content analysis could uncover a correlation between COVID-19-related messages shared by celebrities and public sentiment and discourse direction. How it can affect clinical practice and health policy Our findings could help better understand public perception and attitude toward infectious disease mitigation efforts based on social influences, providing officials and policymakers with tools to combat mis/disinformation shared through social media platforms. and strengthen disease prevention, control and containment for COVID-19 and in response to future disease outbreaks. Posts by politicians and news anchors had the biggest impact, analysis suggests. The data could be used to reinforce public health messages and counter misinformation. |
