Characterizing the Reaction of Doctors to COVID-19 on Twitter

With the recent surges of new COVID-19 variants, clear public health messaging on social media has become more vital than ever. One important source of public health information are messages and reactions expressed by medical professionals. However, the content of messages promogulated by these experts are not fully understood. In this study, we demonstrate how unique Twitter data can be used to explore doctors' reactions to the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine 265,412 English-language tweets about COVID-19 from doctors and a comparable subset of tweets from non-doctors using two-sample t-tests with a Bonferroni-corrected significance threshold. We elucidate how discussion differed over time and in comparison to non-doctors. Tweets spiked surrounding major events and in locations with rising case numbers. Discussion from doctors initially focused on the origin of the virus in Wuhan, later switching to calls to "stay home." Doctors tweeted more often about public health and healthcare workers, whereas non-doctors were more likely to tweet about political topics, including China and the Trump administration. The differences in how doctors and non-doctors engage about COVID-19 can provide insight into the similarities and differences in communication between medical experts and the public. For example, in future surges, experts could tailor their health messaging around topics of interest to the general public to increase engagement. Alternatively, topics that differ across groups may warrant educational messages to better align expert and public perspectives. By identifying both areas of shared purpose and differences in prioritized topics, future public health communications may benefit from analyses that compare the social media messages promulgated by various groups.