This study explores COVID-19 communications disseminated by the top 100 most followed Twitter profiles—what we call the Twitter influencing elite. Focusing on a critical period from January to July 2020, we conducted a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 6,602 tweets about COVID-19 produced by these Covid Influencers. The findings reveal that approximately two-thirds of the COVID-19 tweets in our sample originated from established global media organizations. While these sources were prominent, they were not the “loudest” in terms of engagement and virality. That belonged to powerful politicians like Trump and Obama, popular singers such as Harry Styles and Taylor Swift, and business personalities like Elon Musk. What is more, our qualitative analysis highlights how the affordances of the digital space and the context of the pandemic were leveraged by these influential Twitter users to advance their own agendas. For instance, some blended health information and caring narratives with promotional appeals, while others, such as Elon Musk and Donald Trump, engaged in political agitation and/or anti-care discourses creating a staccato of conflicting messaging and mis/dis-information. These findings demonstrate that the Twitter space is as political and politicized as it is commercial and commercialized. We conclude that digital influencers and celebrities cannot just simply be used to produce communications during times of crisis as many across the study of health and medical communication have argued. The involvement by digital influencers and celebrities—much like the Covid Influencers we examined here—in spreading information must be critically scrutinized, considering the potential for mixed motives, agendas, and real-world outcomes.

中文翻译：

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#CovidTwitter 的制作：谁是最响亮的“Covid 影响者”以及他们对 COVID-19 大流行有何看法？

本研究探讨了 100 位最受关注的 Twitter 个人资料（我们称之为 Twitter 影响力精英）传播的 COVID-19 信息。我们重点关注 2020 年 1 月至 7 月的关键时期，对这些 Covid 影响者发布的 6,602 条有关 COVID-19 的推文进行了定量和定性分析。调查结果显示，我们样本中大约三分之二的 COVID-19 推文源自成熟的全球媒体组织。虽然这些来源很突出，但就参与度和病毒式传播而言，它们并不是“最响亮的”。这属于特朗普和奥巴马等有权势的政客、哈里·斯泰尔斯和泰勒·斯威夫特等流行歌手以及埃隆·马斯克等商界人士。更重要的是，我们的定性分析强调了这些有影响力的 Twitter 用户如何利用数字空间的可供性和大流行的背景来推进自己的议程。例如，一些人将健康信息和关爱叙事与促销诉求相结合，而其他人，例如埃隆·马斯克和唐纳德·特朗普，则参与政治鼓动和/或反护理言论，制造出相互矛盾的信息和错误/虚假信息的断断续续。这些发现表明，Twitter 空间的政治性和政治化程度与它的商业性和商业化程度一样。我们的结论是，数字影响者和名人不能像许多健康和医疗传播研究领域的人所认为的那样，仅仅被用来在危机时期进行传播。数字影响者和名人（就像我们在这里研究的新冠影响者一样）参与信息传播必须受到严格审查，考虑到混合动机、议程和现实世界结果的可能性。