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BackgroundStrict social distancing measures owing to the COVID-19 pandemic have led people to rely more heavily on social media, such as Facebook groups, as a means of communication and information sharing. Multiple Facebook groups have been formed by medical professionals, laypeople, and engineering or technical groups to discuss current issues and possible solutions to the current medical crisis. ObjectiveThis study aimed to characterize Facebook groups formed by laypersons, medical professionals, and technical professionals, with specific focus on information dissemination and requests for crowdsourcing. MethodsFacebook was queried for user-created groups with the keywords “COVID,” “Coronavirus,” and “SARS-CoV-2” at a single time point on March 31, 2020. The characteristics of each group were recorded, including language, privacy settings, security requirements to attain membership, and membership type. For each membership type, the group with the greatest number of members was selected, and in each of these groups, the top 100 posts were identified using Facebook’s algorithm. Each post was categorized and characterized (evidence-based, crowd-sourced, and whether the poster self-identified). STATA (version 13 SE, Stata Corp) was used for statistical analysis. ResultsOur search yielded 257 COVID-19–related Facebook groups. Majority of the groups (n=229, 89%) were for laypersons, 26 (10%) were for medical professionals, and only 2 (1%) were for technical professionals. The number of members was significantly greater in medical groups (21,215, SD 35,040) than in layperson groups (7623, SD 19,480) (P |
