Background: The use of social media assists in the distribution of COVID-19 information to the general public and health professionals. Alternative-level metrics (ie, altmetrics) and PlumX metrics are new bibliometrics that can assess how many times a scientific article has been shared and how much a scientific article has spread within social media platforms.
Objective: Our objective was to characterize and compare the traditional bibliometrics (ie, citation count and impact factors) and new bibliometrics (ie, Altmetric Attention Score [AAS] and PlumX score) of the top 100 COVID-19 articles with the highest AASs.
Methods: The top 100 articles with highest AASs were identified with Altmetric Explorer in May 2020. The AASs, journal names, and the number of mentions in various social media databases of each article were collected. Citation counts and PlumX Field-Weighted Citation Impact scores were collected from the Scopus database. Additionally, AASs, PlumX scores, and citation counts were log-transformed and adjusted by +1 for linear regression, and Spearman correlation coefficients were used to determine correlations.
Results: The median AAS, PlumX score, and citation count were 4922.50, 37.92, and 24.00, respectively. The New England Journal of Medicine published the most articles (18/100, 18%). The highest number of mentions (985,429/1,022,975, 96.3%) were found on Twitter, making it the most frequently used social media platform. A positive correlation was observed between AAS and citation count (r2=0.0973; P=.002), and between PlumX score and citation count (r2=0.8911; P<.001).
Conclusions: Our study demonstrated that citation count weakly correlated with AASs and strongly correlated with PlumX scores, with regard to COVID-19 articles at this point in time. Altmetric and PlumX metrics should be used to complement traditional citation counts when assessing the dissemination and impact of a COVID-19 article.

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Assessing the Dissemination of COVID-19 Articles Across Social Media With Altmetric and PlumX Metrics: Correlational Study.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2022.102048

An entropy-based method to control COVID-19 rumors in online social networks using opinion leaders

Analysis of Information About Medicines Available on Facebook

The study aims to assess the Moroccan community’s using rate of social media, especially during the imposed lockdown, and analyze how the community is using and exploring the news published on Facebook. In this order, we prepared and shared a survey questionnaire among Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp users. The obtained responses exhibit that only 5% of respondents share the news immediately without verifying the source, while 54 % share news only after verifying the source; the rest did not prefer to share COVID-19 related news. This may reflect the awareness level of the sampled population about the importance of verifying the source of information before sharing it, especially during such conditions. However, 64% of participants think that Social Media platforms are not sufficient and appropriate to warn and inform the population about this sanitary crisis as not all Moroccan citizens have access to the internet and do not use social media. Besides, the COVID-19 period has known a rapid spread of misinformation and fake news through these platforms, impacting community mental health. Although, it is recommended to consider warning people about the best practices and use of shared information through these platforms

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The role of social media in delivering news related to the COVID-19 pandemic: Moroccan community as a case study

http://www.ajicjournal.org/article/S0196655322008410/pdf

An unheard voice: infection prevention professionals reflect on their experiences during the covid-19 pandemic

Dear Editor, With the widespread implementation of socialdistancing measures, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in an exponential increase in screen time for everyone. Personal and professional lives have merged through platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, unified in isolation. By listing the ways in which social media has been used during the pandemic locally and globally, we hope to inspire readers to leverage on social media in employing novel methods in medical education, research, patient care and staff support. We also present potential pitfalls based on current literature.

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Alexandra Jty Wong

Papers

The Role of Social Media During the COVID-19 Pandemic