Qualitative Analysis of Visual Risk Communication on Twitter During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The authors used software to locate Twitter’s most retweeted COVID-19 messages from January-October 2020. Messages had to include visuals, be in English, come from verified accounts, and contain select keywords. Using a content analysis, they found that communications early in the pandemic were from media, health, and government institutions, but personal accounts had the highest retweet count. While more messages focused on “health loss,” “health gain” messages were retweeted more often.