Tracking Private WhatsApp Discourse About COVID-19 in Singapore: Longitudinal Infodemiology Study
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Abstract
Worldwide, social media traffic increased following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the spread of COVID-19 content has been described for several social media platforms (eg, Twitter and Facebook), little is known about how such content is spread via private messaging platforms, such as WhatsApp (WhatsApp LLC).
Objective
In this study, we documented (1) how WhatsApp is used to transmit COVID-19 content, (2) the characteristics of WhatsApp users based on their usage patterns, and (3) how usage patterns link to COVID-19 concerns.
Methods
We used the experience sampling method to track day-to-day WhatsApp usage during the COVID-19 pandemic. For 1 week, participants reported each day the extent to which they had received, forwarded, or discussed COVID-19 content. The final data set comprised 924 data points, which were collected from 151 participants.
Results
During the weeklong monitoring process, most participants (143/151, 94.7%) reported at least 1 COVID-19–related use of WhatsApp. When a taxonomy was generated based on usage patterns, around 1 in 10 participants (21/151, 13.9%) were found to have received and shared a high volume of forwarded COVID-19 content, akin to super-spreaders identified on other social media platforms. Finally, those who engaged with more COVID-19 content in their personal chats were more likely to report having COVID-19–related thoughts throughout the day.
Conclusions
Our findings provide a rare window into discourse on private messaging platforms. Such data can be used to inform risk communication strategies during the pandemic.
Trial Registration
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04367363; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04367363
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.29.20203646: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: The study protocol was approved by the Yale-NUS College Ethics Review Committee and was pre-registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04367363).
Consent: 3.2 Measures: At the start of the study, participants provided informed consent through an online link.Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable 3.1 Participants: Between 17 March to 7 May 2020, 151 participants were recruited from the general community (104 females; mean age 36.35 ± 14.70 years; see Table 1). Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources All statistical analyses were conducted in R 3.5.0 (R Core Team, Vienna, Austria) and … SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.29.20203646: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: The study protocol was approved by the Yale-NUS College Ethics Review Committee and was pre-registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04367363).
Consent: 3.2 Measures: At the start of the study, participants provided informed consent through an online link.Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable 3.1 Participants: Between 17 March to 7 May 2020, 151 participants were recruited from the general community (104 females; mean age 36.35 ± 14.70 years; see Table 1). Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources All statistical analyses were conducted in R 3.5.0 (R Core Team, Vienna, Austria) and SPSS 25 (IMB Corp, Armonk, NY). SPSSsuggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Limitations: At this juncture, we note the preliminary nature of our findings and highlight several study limitations. First, although the experience sampling method affords more careful documentation of WhatsApp usage than what is typical in the literature (once-off surveys asking about usage; Hektner et al., 2007), our methodology still relied on participants’ self-reports. Correspondingly, future studies may profit from objective metrics of WhatsApp usage, or from measures to verify accuracy. Second, we opted to study WhatsApp, the most widely used messenger application. However, it is unclear whether our results generalise to other messenger applications (e.g., Facebook Messenger, Telegram). 5.3 Policy Implications: If supported by further studies, our results have implications for crisis management strategies. In terms of risk communication, the observation that nearly all participants (%) engaged in COVID-19 chatter highlights how WhatsApp has become a major source of crisis-related information. This lends credence to official WhatsApp accounts that disseminate crisis content (e.g., that of the World Health Organization’s during the COVID-19 crisis) (Liu & Tong, 2020), providing a clear voice alongside personal and group WhatsApp chats. For public health agencies, our findings provide a proof-of-concept for how WhatsApp usage patterns can categorize individuals and predict their well-being during crises. In the field of digital phenotyping, similar smartphone usage metr...
Results from TrialIdentifier: We found the following clinical trial numbers in your paper:
Identifier Status Title NCT04367363 Completed Social Media and COVID-19 Results from Barzooka: We found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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