Findings and reflections from a social listening exercise to explore public perceptions on health in the context of the COVID-19 response in Nigeria. A flash talk presented to the COVID-19 in the Global South group of Cambridge Global Challenges and Cambridge Africa.

1. Using social media
analysis to explore
public perceptions on
health in the context
of the COVID-19
response in Nigeria
Dr. Ebele Mogo
Global Diet and Activity Research Group
and Network
MRC Epidemiology Unit
University of Cambridge

2. Public health in the context of global
disruptions
• The pandemic is unlikely to be the last major societal disruption the
world witnesses.
• Future disruptions such as climate change related conflicts and natural
disasters require novel responses far beyond the traditional limits of
public health
• Need to combine traditional public health responsibility of scaling cost-
effective top-down responses with an ability to explore contextual factors
e.g. public perceptions that influence their translation into impact

3. Response in
African countries
• Emergency meeting of pan-African Ministers of health
• Creation of a continent-wide strategy
• Agreements around regional-level data sharing, and
solidarity in accessing diagnostics and vaccines
• Mix of national level measures - lockdowns, border
restrictions, mandating of protective behaviours and the
deployment of palliatives
• However, local perceptions of these responses are
understudied and limited by movement restrictions
• Used a social media analysis to explore public perception
in Nigeria in the context of COVID-19 pandemic control
measures between January and August 2020

4. The Informal Appropriation of public space for
Leisure Physical Activity (ALPhA Study)
• Funded by the British Academy’s Urban Infrastructures of
wellbeing Programme + Alborada Research Fund
• Institutional Partners:
• Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of
Lagos
• Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Science, University of
Yaoundé
• MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge
• Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge
• Department of Chemistry, University of Lagos

5. ALPhA Study work packages
• Systematic review on public space initiatives and physical activity in African
cities
• Stakeholder engagement on improving public spaces for leisure physical
activity in both countries
• Social media analysis of public sentiments around COVID-19, leisure
physical activity and health risks and opportunities
• Location mapping and air quality measurement
• Citizen scientist capturing of spaces, risks and opportunities related to physical
activity and NCDs
• Knowledge translation

6. The evolving conversation
• Used Brandwatch, a tool which tracks publicly available
social media data from sites primarily from Twitter to
explore public perceptions during Nigeria’s lockdown
period
• Captures the volume and engagement of public
reactions to marketing campaigns
• Classifies negative and positive sentiments around
such campaigns
• Monitors the geographical spread of these sentiments.
• Query focused on Nigeria’s lockdown period, which
can be broken down into 4 stages between January
and August 2020.

7. The evolving conversation
• Conversation spikes during the pre-lockdown phase related to
changing developments such as testing Nigeria’s 2nd COVID-19
case and the suspension of major football leagues.
• Evolved into calls for caution in protecting health, high
percentage of pandemic deaths with underlying chronic
conditions, and alarming projections for COVID-19 cases in
Lagos (see 1 and 2).
• During lockdown period, negative sentiments decreased and
conversations moved from alarm to advice on health promotion
and challenging health misinformation (See 1,2,3,4).
• Finally, toward the post-lockdown phase, conversation spikes
included interests in weight loss and government updates.
Mental health topics such as depression also became more
prominent in this time period (see 1 and 2).

8. Atypical actors
• Conversations around the pandemic and health were driven
by individuals more than organizations
• Messaging from popular Nigerian personalities including
social media influencers, comedians, musicians, footballers,
and prominent business people had a stronger engagement
than messaging from (health) organizations.
• Influencers like @Aproko_doctor with a similar number of
followers as the Nigerian Center for Disease Control
(NCDC) (1.1 million at the time) had significantly more
retweets and likes from their content

9. Organizations sharing COVID-19 and
health messaging
• Health organizations: World Health Organization, the Lagos State Ministry of
Health, UNICEF Nigeria, Nigerian Centre for Disease Control, and the Nigerian
Federal Ministry of Health who played a role in sharing health messaging
• Businesses such as Konga Nigeria and the Nigerian Stock Exchange
• Government agencies including the Nigerian Police Force
• Media agencies such as the Daily Trust Newspapers
• Vital information for multisectoral response

10. Contextual narratives
• Stay-at-home measures to interrupt disease
transmission versus demand for public space for
leisure activity. Reflected in observations and
concerns about people meant to be staying indoors
out on the streets playing sports.
• Government’s suspension of various activities;
admonitions to stay calm and obey lockdown orders
(see 1; 2,3;4) versus public’s concerns about the
feasibility of lockdown for poorer Nigerians (see 1,2
3) and the elitist nature of banning interstate road
travel while permitting flights (see 1; 2; 3; 4).

11. Reflections on social media
analysis for tailoring public
health responses

12. Spatio-temporal monitoring of public
perceptions
• Social media analytics allow us to explore public perceptions in different
locations, and how they evolve over time.
• Can support the framing of public health responses for specific sub-
populations
• Can support tailoring of public health measures as contextual factors
evolve.

13. Identifying atypical
collaborators for
strengthened
responses
• Sheds light on atypical public health
communicators who could be crucial for a
successful multisectoral response.
• Provides insights on how to frame
messages for a greater reach, and to trace
potential misinformation in order to stem
its spread.

14. Integrating
contextual
narratives for
equitable top-
down measures
• Traditional survey tools leave a significant
time lag between data collection,
interpretation and use
• Leaves the work of interpretation of large
data sets largely to the researcher
• Social media analysis allows capturing of
public perceptions in near real time, and
replies, clarifying tweets, pictures, retweets
aid interpretation
• Can integrate contextual realities into
responses to rapidly evolving issues such as
pandemics

15. Additional
considerations
• Social media analysis not a stand-alone
approach
• Captures the perception of people with active
social media accounts, a factor limited by
social media bans and access to the internet
• More social media data from highly populated
cities such as Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja and
Kaduna
• Social media analytics tools often better at
flagging social media conversations in popular
global languages such as English
• Social media analytics may be more effective
at capturing public perception on certain issues
such as those that spark strong sentiments