JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Strict social distancing measures resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have led people to rely more heavily on social media, such as Facebook Groups, as a means of communication and information sharing. Multiple Facebook Groups have been developed by medical professionals, lay people, and engineering or technical groups to discuss current issues and possible solutions to the medical crisis.

Objective:

To characterize Facebook groups created by laypersons, medical professionals, and technical professionals, with specific focus on information dissemination and requests for crowdsourcing.

Methods:

The Facebook social media platform was queried for user-created Groups with the keywords “COVID,” “Coronavirus,” and “SARS-CoV-2” at a single time point on March 31st, 2020. Characteristics for each group were collected, including language, privacy setting, security requirement to join group, and membership type. For each membership type, the group with the greatest number of members was selected, and in each of these groups, the Top 100 posts using Facebook’s algorithm were identified. Each post was categorized and characterized (evidence-based, crowd-sourced, and whether the poster self-identified). STATA Statistical Software and were used to perform statistical analysis.

Results:

Our search yielded 257 COVID-19-related Facebook Groups Majority of the groups (89%, 229) were for laypersons, 10% (26) were for medical professionals, and only 1% (2) groups were for technical professionals. The number of members in medical groups (mean=21,215, SD=35,040) was significantly greater than those in laypersons groups (mean=7,623, SD=19,480), p<0.01. Medical groups were significantly more likely to require security checks to join the group (81% vs 43%, P<.001) and less likely to be public (3 vs 123, P<.001) compared to laypersons groups. Medical groups had the highest user engagement, averaging 502 ± 633 reactions (P<.01) and 224 ± 311 comments (P<.01) per post. Medical professionals were more likely to use the Facebook groups for education and information sharing, including academic posts (P<.001), idea sharing (P=.003), resource sharing (P=.02) and professional opinion (P<.001), and request for crowdsourcing (P=0.003). Laypersons groups were more likely to share news (P<.001), humor and motivation (P<.001), and layperson opinions (P<.001). There was no significant difference in the number of evidence-based posts between the groups

Conclusions:

Medical professionals utilize Facebook groups as a forum to facilitate collective intelligence (CI) and are more likely to use the Facebook groups for education and information sharing, including academic posts, idea sharing, resource sharing, and professional opinion. This suggests the power of social media to facilitate CI across geographical distances. Laypersons groups were more likely to share news and humor and motivation, suggesting utilization of Facebook Groups to provide comedic relief as a coping mechanism. Further investigations are necessary to study Facebook groups’ roles in facilitating collective intelligence, crowdsourcing, education, and community building.