Date of Award

2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

First Advisor

Pamela Larde

Abstract

The problem investigated in this study was the conflicting social media messages between the Office of the President and the two preeminent national health organizations (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the U.S. National Institutes of Health) regarding the COVID-19 crisis. The purpose of this study was to explore alignment and disconnect in the social media messaging between the Office of the President and the top two health organizations and subsequent state government decisions around the COVID 19 pandemic in the southeast region of the United States. Given this research purpose, the research approach used was a qualitative analysis with thematic analysis of social media messaging from the Office of the President and the top two health organizations during the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the southeastern region of the United States chose to disregard the advice of the CDC and the NIAID offered through their respective Twitter accounts during the first 6 months of 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, regarding wearing face coverings, testing, staying at home, and vaccines. Though the Tweets of President Trump initially also supported these initiatives to mitigate the spread of the vaccine, his Tweets and actions in the later part of the study period did not, leading Republican followers, specifically, to follow suit. The nation’s two top health agencies and the President were often not in alignment due to a lack of a concerted effort to work together to provide the best possible information to the public. Because this study primarily focused on the decisions made in the southeastern region of the United States, it would be beneficial to extend this study to other populations to determine experiential differences and similarities.

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