Social media analysis of the West Java Governor’s Twitter account in the early COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This study investigates the Twitter communication network related to the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic in West Java. On the basis of the Social Network Analysis (SNA) method, it was found that Governor Ridwan Kamil's Twitter account had become a central account of Covid-19-related virtual traffic information at the earliest stages of the pandemic. Based on the topic of the classification of Ridwan Kamil's Twitter posts, it was found that the topics of information disseminated were quite varied and transparent. These posts were found to be capable of inviting massive community engagement, even making Ridwan Kamil 's posts as source of information to be re-disseminated. All post topics have a different frequency of publication. The most frequent were
those related to policy promotion, and the least were posts related to the campaign combating against negative stigma
of infected people.