Netizen Engagement in Twitter during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract
In the advent of Covid-19 where netizens were forced to stay at home, they stormed the internet to engage with other netizens in lieu of socialization. Among all social media sites, Twitter has become a popular platform for netizens to express their thoughts and beliefs on a variety of themes. Since the Covid-19 is a novel disease which everyone isn’t prepared for, the netizens have different responses toward it. This study, therefore, aimed to plot Covid-19 related trends to identify which trends were constantly discussed and were fluctuating. Given the observed descriptive analysis of these trends, this study then analyzed the data relating it to other Covid-19 related trends and to the existing data of Covid-19 cases. The topical categories identified from mining Covid-19 related trends include health, politics, government interventions, human activities, perceptions, and education. Moreover, it was found out that the rise and fall of Covid-19 cases in the country has no significant relationship to the trends on Twitter. Therefore, the netizens continue to discuss topics on Twitter regardless of the data on Covid-19 cases. The way the netizens communicate with other netizens and the way they react to the novel disease is, thus, unpredictable. This means there might be other factors that could have caused the netizens to engage with and discuss the different topical categories.