Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Scoial Media Use: Evidence from Scopus Database

Authors

  • Taha Hussein Musa School of Medical and Health Sciences, Faculty of Pharmacy, Libyan International Medical University, Benghazi, Libya; School of Medicine, Darfur University College, Nyala, Sudan
  • Hassan Hussein Musa Faculty of Medical Laboratory Sciences, University of Khartoum, Khartoum, Sudan
  • Maram Abdulhakim Abdulkarem Al-sharai Guangzhou Institute of biomedical and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China
  • Angwi Enow Tassang Department of Sociology, School of Public Administration, Hohai University, Nanjing, China
  • Tosin Yinka Akintunde Department of Sociology, School of Public Administration, Hohai University, Nanjing, China
  • Walker Anita Nyarkoa School of Public Health, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 211166,China
  • Bolaji Damilola Adetola Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Media and communication, Bijing, China
  • Ismail Adam Arbab School of Medical and Health Sciences, Faculty of Pharmacy, Libyan International Medical University, Benghazi, Libya; Department of Chemistry, College of Education, West Kordofan University, West Kordofan State, Al-Nuhud: PO Box 20, Sudan
  • Ala Gamaleldin Abdelgadir Khalifa School of Medical and Health Sciences, Faculty of Pharmacy, Libyan International Medical University, Benghazi, Libya
  • Mohsen Hussein Suliman School of Medical and Health Sciences, Faculty of Pharmacy, Libyan International Medical University, Benghazi, Libya
  • Riad Mohammed Abdelrahman School of Medical and Health Sciences, Faculty of Pharmacy, Libyan International Medical University, Benghazi, Libya
  • Upama Ghimire Nepal Health Research Council, Ramshah Path, Kathmandu, Nepal

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14738/bjhr.1202.18664

Keywords:

Bibliometric Analysis, Covid-19, Social Media, Thematic Mapping, Citation Analys

Abstract

Background: A cademia has come to focus more on the rising influence of social media during the Covid-19 pandemic, manily in response to its effects. The present study systematically examines global research trends over the past 6 years on the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic on social media use. Method: We searched the Scopus database for literature published during the year (2019–2024) regarding the worldwide effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on social media use. Data visualization and analysis were performed using R-Studio, VOSviewer, GraphPad Prism (version 5), and OriginPro 8 (OriginLab Corp.) to analyze bibliometric data and produce tables and figures. Results: Of 1,192 documents identified through searching Scopus databases, including 1172 Articles and 20 reviews, were retrieved between 2019 and 2024. The number of publications is growing annually, reaching over 300 in 2021 and 2022. The countries with the most published articles were the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Spain, and China. University of Toronto, National University of Singapore, University College London, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard Medical School have the highest output. The Journal of Medical Internet Research is the leading and most common journal in terms of the number of publications and citations in the field. As for authors, WANG Y from the School of Public Health, Fudan University, Fudan Institute of Health Communication, Shanghai, Chin has the highest number of published articles. Amgen is the funding agency. The National Institute of Health is among the top funding agencies, followed by UK Research and Innovation, which funded most of the research. According to keyword analysis, "social media," "Covid-19", "human," "pandemic," and "humans" are the five keywords Plus with the highest frequency of co-occurrence, where "Covid-19", "Twitter," "social media," "sentiment analysis," and "coronavirus," with the highest frequency of Authors Keywords co-occurrence. Conclusion: The Covid-19 pandemic has strongly influenced worldwide social media research and publications in the past six years. An increase in the emphasis on behavior and machine learning studies, as identified through keyword analysis, reflects a shift towards an interdisciplinary study of the impacts related to the pandemic. Interest in the subject shifted from general topics of Covid-19 to specific fields like public health and computational methods. Twitter has been a key data provider, particularly in vaccine research, to help inform and shape existing policy discussions.

References

T.H. Musa, T. Ahmad, M. Khan, P. Wei, Global outbreak of COVID-19 : a new challenge ?, (2020) 2–3. https://doi.org/10.3855/jidc.12530.

G. Pennycook, J. McPhetres, Y. Zhang, J.G. Lu, D.G. Rand, Fighting COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media: Experimental Evidence for a Scalable Accuracy-Nudge Intervention., Psychol. Sci. 31 (2020) 770–780. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620939054.

J. Gao, P. Zheng, Y. Jia, H. Chen, Y. Mao, S. Chen, Y. Wang, H. Fu, J. Dai, Mental health problems and social media exposure during COVID-19 outbreak, (2020) 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231924.

Y. Bao, Y. Sun, S. Meng, J. Shi, L. Lu, 2019-nCoV epidemic: address mental health care to empower society., Lancet (London, England) 395 (2020) e37–e38. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30309-3.

L. Kang, Y. Li, S. Hu, M. Chen, C. Yang, B.X. Yang, Y. Wang, J. Hu, J. Lai, X. Ma, J. Chen, L. Guan, G. Wang, H. Ma, Z. Liu, The mental health of medical workers in Wuhan, China dealing with the 2019 novel coronavirus., The Lancet. Psychiatry 7 (2020) e14. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(20)30047-X.

J. Xue, J. Chen, C. Chen, C. Zheng, S. Li, T. Zhu, Public discourse and sentiment during the COVID 19 pandemic: Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation for topic modeling on Twitter, PLoS One 15 (2020) e0239441–e0239441. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239441.

M. Drouin, B.T. McDaniel, J. Pater, T. Toscos, How Parents and Their Children Used Social Media and Technology at the Beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Associations with Anxiety, Cyberpsychology, Behav. Soc. Netw. 23 (2020) 727–736. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2020.0284.

J. Gao, P. Zheng, Y. Jia, H. Chen, Y. Mao, S. Chen, Y. Wang, H. Fu, J. Dai, Mental health problems and social media exposure during COVID-19 outbreak., PLoS One 15 (2020) e0231924. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231924.

T.Y. Akintunde, T.H. Musa, H.H. Musa, I.H. Musa, C. Shaojun, E. Ibrahim, A.E. Tassang, M.S.E.D.M. Helmy, Bibliometric Analysis of Global Scientific Literature on effects of COVID-19 Pandemic on Mental Health, Asian J. Psychiatr. (2021) 102753. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.AJP.2021.102753.

M. Helmy, T.Y. Akintunde, T.H. Musa, Global Research Evidence on COVID19- and Anxiety : A Bibliometric Analysis, AGJSR 39 (2021) 60–78.

I.H. Musa, I. Zamit, M. Okeke, T.Y. Akintunde, T.H. Musa, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Oncology: Historical Overview of Documents Indexed in the Web of Science Database, Eurasian J. Med. Oncol. 5 (2021) 239–248. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.14744/ejmo.2021.24856.

T.Y. Akintunde, S. Chen, T.H. Musa, F. Oluseyi, A. Adedeji, E. Ibrahim, A.E. Tassang, H. Musa, H.H. Musa, T. Yinka, S. Chen, T.H. Musa, F. Oluseyi, Tracking the progress in COVID-19 and vaccine safety research – a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of publications indexed in Scopus database, (2021).

T.H. Musa, T.Y. Akintunde, I.H. Musa, L.A. Mohammed, A.E. Tassang, H.H. Musa, Rift valley fever : thematic analysis of documents indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection database, (2022). https://doi.org/10.21037/aoi-21-9.

M. Aria, C. Cuccurullo, bibliometrix: An R-tool for comprehensive science mapping analysis, J. Informetr. (2017). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2017.08.007.

N.J. Van Eck, L. Waltman, Manual for VOSviwer version 1.6.10, CWTS Meaningful Metrics (2019).

W. Ahmed, J. Vidal-Alaball, J. Downing, F.L. Seguí, COVID-19 and the 5G conspiracy theory: Social network analysis of twitter data, J. Med. Internet Res. 22 (2020) 1–9. https://doi.org/10.2196/19458.

E. Chen, K. Lerman, E. Ferrara, Tracking Social Media Discourse About the COVID-19 Pandemic: Development of a Public Coronavirus Twitter Data Set, JMIR Public Heal. Surveill 6 (2020) e19273.

A. Sharma, A. Adhikary, S.B. Borah, Covid-19’s impact on supply chain decisions: Strategic insights from NASDAQ 100 firms using Twitter data., J. Bus. Res. 117 (2020) 443–449. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.05.035.

M.O. Lwin, J. Lu, A. Sheldenkar, P.J. Schulz, W. Shin, R. Gupta, Y. Yang, Global Sentiments Surrounding the COVID-19 Pandemic on Twitter: Analysis of Twitter Trends., JMIR Public Heal. Surveill. 6 (2020) e19447.

S. Boon-Itt, Y. Skunkan, Public Perception of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Twitter: Sentiment Analysis and Topic Modeling Study., JMIR Public Heal. Surveill. 6 (2020) e21978. https://doi.org/10.2196/21978.

J. Xue, J. Chen, R. Hu, C. Chen, C. Zheng, Y. Su, T. Zhu, Twitter Discussions and Emotions About the COVID-19 Pandemic: Machine Learning Approach., J. Med. Internet Res. 22 (2020) e20550. https://doi.org/10.2196/20550. 419

U. Naseem, I. Razzak, M. Khushi, P.W. Eklund, J. Kim, COVIDSenti: A Large-Scale Benchmark Twitter Data Set for COVID-19 Sentiment Analysis, IEEE Trans. Comput. Soc. Syst. 8 (2021) 1003–1015. https://doi.org/10.1109/TCSS.2021.3051189.

G.K. Shahi, A. Dirkson, T.A. Majchrzak, An exploratory study of COVID-19 misinformation on Twitter., Online Soc. Networks Media 22 (2021) 100104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.osnem.2020.100104.

J.C. Lyu, E. Le Han, G.K. Luli, COVID-19 Vaccine-Related Discussion on Twitter: Topic Modeling and Sentiment Analysis., J. Med. Internet Res. 23 (2021) e24435. https://doi.org/10.2196/24435.

K. Garcia, L. Berton, Topic detection and sentiment analysis in Twitter content related to COVID-19 from Brazil and the USA, Appl. Soft Comput. 101 (2021) 107057. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2020.107057.

W. Ahmed, J. Vidal-Alaball, J. Downing, F. López Seguí, COVID-19 and the 5G Conspiracy Theory: Social Network Analysis of Twitter Data., J. Med. Internet Res. 22 (2020) e19458.

E. Chen, K. Lerman, E. Ferrara, Tracking social media discourse about the COVID-19 pandemic: Development of a public coronavirus Twitter data set, JMIR Public Heal. Surveill. 6 (2020).

K. Garcia, L. Berton, Topic detection and sentiment analysis in Twitter content related to COVID-19 from Brazil and the USA, Appl. Soft Comput. 101 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2020.107057.

K. Sharun, T.H. Musa, H.H. Musa, R. Kumar, A.M. Pawde, V. Chandra, H.S. Tuli, K. Dhama, Amarpal, G.T. Sharma, Mapping global trends in adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cell research: A bibliometric analysis using scopus database, Ann. Med. Surg. 77 (2022) 103542. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amsu.2022.103542.

T.H. Musa, T. Ahmad, W. Li, J. Kawuki, M.N. Wana, H.H. Musa, P. Wei, A Bibliometric Analysis of Global Scientific Research on Scrub Typhus, Biomed Res. Int. (2020). https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/5737893.

H.H. Musa, T.H. Musa, A systematic and thematic analysis of the top 100 cited articles on mRNA vaccine indexed in Scopus database, Hum. Vaccin. Immunother. 18 (2022) 2135927.

I.H. Musa, L.O. Afolabi, I. Zamit, T.H. Musa, H.H. Musa, A. Tassang, T.Y. Akintunde, W. Li, Arti fi cial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Cancer Research : A Systematic and Thematic Analysis of the Top 100 Cited Articles Indexed in Scopus Database, (2022). https://doi.org/10.1177/10732748221095946.

J. Kawuki, X. Yu, T.H. Musa, Bibliometric Analysis of Ebola Research Indexed in Web of Science and Scopus (2010-2020), Biomed Res. Int. (2020). https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/5476567.

V.A. Uyanga, T.H. Musa, O.E. Oke, J. Zhao, X. Wang, H. Jiao, O.M. Onagbesan, H. Lin, Global trends and research frontiers on heat stress in poultry from 2000 to 2021: A bibliometric analysis., Front. Physiol. 14 (2023) 1123582. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2023.1123582.

T. Ahmad, M.A. Murad, S. Nasir, T.H. Musa, M. Baig, J. Hui, Trends in hepatitis A research indexed in the Web of Science: a bibliometric analysis over the period from 1985 to 2019, Hum. Vaccin. Immunother. 17 (2021) 3221–3229. https://doi.org/10.1080/21645515.2021.1914804.

H.H. Musa, T.H. Musa, I.H. Musa, I.H. Musa, Global scientific research progress in mycetoma: a bibliometric analysis, Trans. R. Soc. Trop. Med. Hyg. (2021) 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1093/trstmh/trab072.

M. Mohammed, J. Li, Knowledge mapping and visualization of current sarcopenia and cancer research: a bibliometric analysis, Beni-Suef Univ. J. Basic Appl. Sci. 12 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s43088-023-

M.Y. Ni, L. Yang, C.M.C. Leung, N. Li, X.I. Yao, Y. Wang, G.M. Leung, B.J. Cowling, Q. Liao, Mental Health, Risk Factors, and Social Media Use During the COVID-19 Epidemic and Cordon Sanitaire Among the Community and Health Professionals in Wuhan, China: Cross-Sectional Survey., JMIR Ment. Heal. 7 (2020) e19009.

M.S. Islam, T. Sarkar, S.H. Khan, A.-H. Mostofa Kamal, S.M.M. Hasan, A. Kabir, D. Yeasmin, M.A. Islam, K.I. Amin Chowdhury, K.S. Anwar, A.A. Chughtai, H. Seale, COVID-19-Related Infodemic and Its Impact on Public Health: A Global Social Media Analysis., Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg. 103 (2020) 1621–1629. https://doi.org/10.4269/ajtmh.20-0812.

K.M.C. Malecki, J.A. Keating, N. Safdar, Crisis Communication and Public Perception of COVID-19 Risk in the Era of Social Media., Clin. Infect. Dis. an Off. Publ. Infect. Dis. Soc. Am. 72 (2021) 697–702. https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa758.

N. Puri, E.A. Coomes, H. Haghbayan, K. Gunaratne, Social media and vaccine hesitancy: new updates for the era of COVID-19 and globalized infectious diseases., Hum. Vaccin. Immunother. 16 (2020) 2586–2593.

J. Abbas, D. Wang, Z. Su, A. Ziapour, The Role of Social Media in the Advent of COVID-19 Pandemic: Crisis Management, Mental Health Challenges and Implications., Risk Manag. Healthc. Policy 14 (2021) 1917–1932. https://doi.org/10.2147/RMHP.S284313.

H.B. Carlsen, J. Toubøl, B. Brincker, On solidarity and volunteering during the COVID-19 crisis in Denmark: the impact of social networks and social media groups on the distribution of support, Eur. Soc. 23 (2021) S122–S140. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616696.2020.1818270.

L.M.C.B. Sepulcri, E.W. Mainardes, C.C. Belchior, Nonprofit branding: a bibliometric analysis, J. Prod. Brand Manag. 29 (2020) 655–673. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-05-2019-2366.

Downloads

Published

2025-04-25

How to Cite

Musa, T. H., Musa, H. H., Al-sharai, M. A. A., Tassang, A. E., Akintunde, T. Y., Nyarkoa, W. A., … Ghimire, U. (2025). Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Scoial Media Use: Evidence from Scopus Database. British Journal of Healthcare and Medical Research, 12(02), 402–421. https://doi.org/10.14738/bjhr.1202.18664

Issue

Vol. 12 No. 02 (2025): British Journal of Healthcare and Medical Research

Section

Original Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Taha Hussein Musa, Riad Mohammed Abdelrahman, Mohsen Hussein Suliman, Ala Gamaleldin Abdelgadir Khalifa, Ismail Adam Arbab, Bolaji Damilola Adetola, Walker Anita Nyarkoa, Tosin Yinka Akintunde, Angwi Enow Tassang, Maram Abdulhakim Abdulkarem Al-sharai, Hassan Hussein Musa, Upama Ghimire

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Most read articles by the same author(s)