What Did “Experts in the Cluster Taskforce for COVID-19” Post on Twitter?

Abstract

In 2020, COVID-19 had a huge impact worldwide. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan organized a “cluster countermeasure group” comprising public health and infectious diseases experts. They provided information about COVID-19 on Twitter. In this study, the text analysis software “KH Coder” was used to confirm the kind of information posted by these experts on the Twitter account. Scientific information, such as explanations of terms, future predictions of the spread of infection, and public health measures, were provided. Twitter account had played a role in providing scientific information. That is, we practiced risk communication. It helped to increase the trust of the account by receiving genuine certification from Twitter Inc. Text analysis helped assess risk communication.