The Understanding of Social Media Usage Among Twitter Users on COVID-19 Issues

Abstract

This study aimed to gain an understanding of social media usage on human interaction of COVID-19 issues among Twitter users. COVID-19 is an issue that is globally discussed on social media. The information can easily reach the global audience in just a split second. The Malaysian Ministry of Health took the initiative to disseminate COVID-19 information to the public by creating a Twitter account @KKMPutrajaya.According to David (2020), there are almost 500 million tweets per day around the world. Tweet Binder (2020) stated there were 628 million tweets about COVID-19 in May 2021. This is where we can see Twitter's enormous impact on users and how it affects human interaction. The research adopted a qualitative approach and the informants involved are Malaysians, between 18-30 years old who use Twitter as a medium to obtain information about COVID-19. The outcome of this study revealed the types of social media usage can be further classified into three elements which are they agree that Twitter provides (i) dissemination of news and ideas (ii) analysis of reliability of facts and (iii) production of reciprocal action among users. It also highlights features on Twitter that encourage communication as it provides (i) collective information gathering (ii) improved human interactivity and (iii) stimulation of information via hashtags, search, trending, and space. The factors influencing social media usage on the human interaction of COVID-19 issues among Twitter users are Twitter provides a medium for (i) a source of information (ii) financial opportunities (iii) practical technicalities and (iv) the presence of various communities.