Content Analysis of Social Media: Public and Government Response to COVID-19 Pandemic in Indonesia

Abstract

Nowadays, the use of social media to analyze disaster responses has become important. However, its application to support decision-making by the Government during disasters still present significant challenges. This article offers a complete analysis of the response of the public and the Government in dealing with the COVID-19 Pandemics in Indonesia. The content analysis uses to analyze the tweet post on Twitter to determine the public and government response. Data was collected from public and government tweets on Twitter and producing 11,578 community tweets from the public and 958 tweets from the government account. This data was collected from 2nd March until 15th April 2020. Public comments are sorted into six categories of comments, that is fate, logic, government mention, worry, scientist, and impression, while sentiments are classified as positive, negative, and neutral. Government comments are sorted into eight categories, namely information, education, operating, warnings, resources provision, volunteer recruitment, and rumors management. The results showed that the public encourages and supports the Government to cope with a pandemic think rationally and logically in dealing with this Pandemic. In addition, the study indicates that the Government has not used social media as a medium for communicating with the public. The quality of government response is not good, especially in the categories of information on operations, warnings, resources provision, recruitment of volunteers, and rumors management. The implication of this study suggests how the data might be useful for the Government in delivering information during the Pandemic.