Characterizing the Gendered Twitter Discussion of COVID-19 Hoax.

ABSTRACT

We collected data from Twitter and used content analysis to better understand the gendered discussion around COVID-19 as a hoax. We identified three main categories in the inductive stage of the research (1) sympathetic to human rights & perceived injustice, (2) invincibility and superiority of COVID hoaxers, (3) conspiracies and/or hidden agendas. The findings of the study show that among all gender groups, the first category is the most dominant (44.4%), the third category is the second most frequent (35.6%), and the last category (19.9%) is the least frequent. However, when the discussion is centered on men (40.2%) and gender and sexual minorities (GSM; 69.6%) groups, the last category is the most dominant with regard to stigmatizing GSM groups by falsely associating them with progressive secret agendas. As for women's group, being sympathetic to human rights and the perceived injustice against them during the pandemic constitute the most dominant category (51.5%). We discuss the implications of the study in the conclusion.