How social media content has contributed during an

epidemic situation.
Introduction
In the 21st century one of the major upgrades that humans have adopted in terms of being a
social animal was indulging and engaging themselves on social media platforms. The social
media platform was brought in with a thought of bringing people from all over the world close to
each other. This idea of bringing people close to each other has grown into many folds over
years. People have turned this into a digital marketplace of ideas, thoughts and also a source of
income. According to reports the number of people using the internet is around approximately
4.5 billion people out of which 3.8 billion have been actively using and contributing in social
media platforms like facebook, twitter, instagram ,youtube etc. More than 60% of the world
population is online already and it will increase by the end of this year. The growth in this sector
has been immense and increasing consumers also gave different ways of exchanging
information. Over the time people have also seen this platform as a means of sharing mainstream
news and data all over the internet. Information goes viral by gaining maximum audience
engagement within a very short span of time.

The 21st century has also witnessed the pandemic situation of COVID-19, that started in China
and gradually took over the whole world. More than 200 countries of the world have been
affected directly or indirectly from this pandemic. Due to the community spread of this virus
huge population of the world was forced under compulsory lockdown with no or minimum
movement. As the movement of people was restricted or banned, many economic activities went
under total shutdown. Social Media platforms played a very important role during this time for
exchange of various information between different groups of people. As the spreading of
information on social media platforms is much faster than traditional media platforms many
underprivileged sections of the society got the attention and were provided with some during the
lockdown. People started spending more and more time on these platforms and hence consumed
a lot of content in the form of news, videos, podcasts etc. Not only did the virus spread rapidly
but so did the information and also misinformation about the outbreak. Within weeks of
emergence of the novel coronavirus people have considered social media as the most reliable
news platform where both mainstream news as well as offbeat information where available and it
went viral in no time. Covid-19 is not the only epidemic that has occurred during the age of
social media and internet, H1N1 virus 2009 or the Zika virus of 2015 they also took place during
the age of internet but didn't get enough viewership on the internet then what made Covid-19 so
viral on the internet? The reason behind this can be the easy accessible internet there for us.
Many NGOs were not essentially equipped with technology to communicate risk information
online. People started looking at social media for directives but ended up consuming the most
unreliable information. It has been seen that people started to spend more time on the social
media platforms and got hooked with the content available there. People not only consumed that
content but also shared it over the internet.

Social media provided a platform for local issues to acquire a global awareness. In the current
scenario of Covid -19 people went through a lot of content and information about Covid-19 over
the past three months but due to the amount of information that circulated over the social media
platform, after sometime it was very difficult for common people to authenticate the information
whether it is valid or not. Accurate and credible dissemination of right information about the
virus causing a pandemic could help in controlling the spread of virus and associated anxiety in
the population. Organizations like WHO (World health Organization) regularly circulated
journals and guidelines regarding Covid-19 across the social media platforms like Facebook or
Twitter. But these were trusted sources from where people got genuine facts and information but
there were also other sources from where the dissemination of misinformation also took place
this resulted into trending of myths about Covid-19 over the internet. For example when
Covid-19 was first reported in China during the mid January, Indian media considered and
spreaded a notion that the novel coronavirus is a very much China problem and it won’t affect
the ‘vegetarian” neighbours and #No Meat No Coronavirus hashtag actually treneded on Twitter.
India was fighting against both the pandemic (Covid-19) and the infodemic about coronavirus.
Studies show that social media still has the trouble to identify and distinguish between an actual
fact and a misinformation, it has also been seen that dissemination of misinformation is much
faster as compared to genuine facts. Thus the rate at which the infodemic spreads is much faster
than the actual virus. Due to infodemic the social media audience find it difficult to find a
trustworthy source of information and in turn affect their decision making process. As social
media platforms are open everybody can write or podcast and publish it on the internet thus there
is no quality control. Social media platform which received the maximum amount of audience
response was Twitter. It has been observed that a myth about the disease on an average received
over 71000 retweets within a day of posting it. After realising how infodemic is spreading faster
than the virus itself Twitter started regulating its content towards more reliable sources like
WHO for any information related to Covid-19.

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The objective of the study is to identify the role of social media platform like Twitter during a
pandemic outbreak (Covid-19)

Identify the hashtags

Rational of the hashtags
Lexi mancer

Review of Literature
As people were under complete lockdown they started to spend more time on instagramming or
tweeting about their experiences in self isolation. Social Media has already taken the place of
primary information source in today's current situation of coronavirus. It is considered as the
fastest mode of communicating with a large group of audience. Information spreads much faster
on social media than on any other traditional media platforms and so does the misinformation
also. Any news or information in today's world first breaks on Twitter and then on any other
platforms.According to reports last month more than 550 million tweets were posted on Twitter
with the terms coronavirus, covid-19 and pandemic. These advantages of social media comes
with an added disadvantage of the spreading of misinformations and myths. As Twitter is an
open platform for sharing information there was no censorship over content that is being
published online. Thus making it difficult for viewers and users to distinguish between authentic
information and rumours or myths. With billions of people online everyday it is nearly
impossible to trace back the actual source of misinformation or control it once it has gone viral.
In the current aspect of Coronavirus inaccurate information affects all aspects of human life
specially mental health. The panic of coronavirus travels faster on social media, after India
reported its first COVID-19 case in the month of February people started to panic and purchased
mask and sanitizers on large scale but before that everyone had a misconception that coronavirus
in a chinese thing and it will not affect India in any way. Within weeks of the emergence of
coronavirus in India the search of updates about the virus on the internet also increased by 50%
-70%. As there was more and more search about the virus the amount of information on the web
also increased thus confusing the users about what is appropriate and what is not. Infodemic is
not only harmful for human life but also affects both the private and public sector of the
economy. The spatio-temporal variability in the discussions on social media, specifically Twitter,
is often not in line with the spatiotemporal occurrence and intensity of the outbreak.

It has been seen that misleading posts have been more popular than that of the ones which are
disseminating accurate and relevant information about the disease. Conspiracy theories about the
disease have also been a prominent contributor towards the infodemic situation. A number of
conspiracy theories about coronavirus emerged on the web that gained a lot of public attention
and got blown away with time like the ‘virus being a biological weapon created by US or China’
or ‘the virus is the byproduct of chinese food etc. These controversial theories created a racist
environment around the world towards chinese people and similar looking ones like in Japan or
Indonesia. In India people started to protest against chinese products and also promoted a ban on
trading in Chinese products.

In India social media myths about the virus spread like bushfire starting when PM Narendra
Modi first announced the Janta Curfew, people thought that the janta Curfew was announced to
kill the 14 hour transmission chain of the virus which actually was a myth.

After that many right wing political parties announced that drinking cow urine will kill viruses
and organised urine drinking events. These were the top trending stories on Twitter and people
also believed this misinformation and continued to share it over the internet. It has been seen that
some of the fastest travelling misinformation has come from some of the most influential people
of the country. The number of unverified and informal sources of information is much higher
than than the genuine formal sources. According to study of random 673 tweets regarding
coronavirus, it has been seen that 66% of the tweets came from unverified sources and the rest
came from verified twitter accounts. A majority of the included tweets contained serious content
of which 81.4% tweets included genuine information about coronavirus pandemic.Arou In total,
153 tweets (24.8%) included misinformation, and 107 (17.4%) included unverifiable information
regarding the COVID-19 epidemic.

#Covid-19, #Coronavirus, #covid 19 these were some of the most commonly used hashtags
during the epidemic which gathered the maximum audience engagement. All relevant as well
irrelevant tweets used these hashtags for breaking news. #StayHomeStaySafe was also used for
public announcements to inform the population to self isolate themselves and avoid going out. It
was also used for promoting entertaining videos and podcasts that can be done during the
lockdown situation. The other hashtag which gathered the maximum number of audience was
#Qurantineandchill, widely used to promote light hearted content to promote what can be done
during the lockdown period sitting at home without involving in outdoor activities.

During the times of pandemic outbreak , a number of questions arise seeking immediate clear
and consistent responses. Keeping in mind the welfare of the public, government officials cannot
respond with accurate time information about the situation. With overabundance of information
in the digital age, it becomes difficult for people to identify truthful and trustworthy sources from
false or misleading ones (Wemer, David A., 2020) due to which the concerned authorities and
experts tend to lose their credibility among the public. People continue to draw conclusions and
judgements from those unverified sources about the pandemic situation. (Rich, P. R., &
Zaragoza, M. S. 2016). It is important to break the cycle of misinformation as it expands at the
same speed as that of the content production and generation thus the infomedic accelerates and
disseminate misinformation. Social media platforms like Twitter as well as the public have to be
socially responsible and ensure that only genuine information from reliable sources are
published, as it can influence the public towards a positive outcome from such outbreaks.