Social media and COVID-19

Social media increasingly pervade daily activities in multiple life domains. Social media can represent a channel of information, and social and emotional support, but also of misinformation and emotional turmoil. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the aim of the current study was to explore people’s use of social media related to COVID-19 and the effects of such uses. Data was collected through an international web-based survey on social media uses and effects related to COVID-19, available in 8 languages and distributed online. This generated both quantitative and qualitative data, analyzed with statistics and thematic analysis respectively.