A report on the operation of the Twitter account “Experts of the COVID-19 Cluster Taskforce”

• Published in: Japanese Journal of Health Education and Promotion Vol. 30; no. 1; pp. 37 - 45
• Main Authors: HORIGUCHI, Itsuko, ISHIBASHI, Yoshiki, TAYA, Hajime, ANPO, Yuriko, IZUKURA, Shiori, KOGUCHI, Ryotaro, NARA, Yumiko
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: JAPANESE SOCIETY OF HEALTH EDUCATION AND PROMOTION 28.02.2022
• Subjects: COVID-19; emergency; operation; risk communication; Twitter
• ISSN: 1340-2560; 1884-5053
• DOI: 10.11260/kenkokyoiku.30.37

Objective: A Twitter account called “Experts of the COVID-19 Cluster Taskforce” was created by a communications team belonging to the “Cluster Taskforce” organized by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare. Here, we report on the operation and issues involving this Twitter account.Field activity: The Twitter account, which was used for emergency risk communication, had up to 400,000 followers in Japan. The account disseminated information on risk management based on epidemic forecasting and cluster analysis. Researchers created tweets in the form of text and media (videos and images). On June 10, 2020, we acquired data from Twitter, Inc. using the Twitter analysis function to analyze the tweets. Within a 55-day period, from April 3 to May 29 of 2020, 89 tweets were posted. The first day generated the highest number of tweets for a single day (17 tweets). Out of the 89 tweets, 42 were text-only, 28 contained images, and 19 contained videos. The leading tweet had more than 10 million impressions. Additionally, the tweets up to the fifth rank had videos or images attached.Future implications: The Twitter account enabled professionals to communicate directly with the public without going through the media, and thus share information with large audiences. For this account to work, public trust in the experts was required. We found that effective operation of this account necessitated prior discussion of how to deal with inappropriate posts.