Araştırma Makalesi FROM PANDEMICS TO INFODEMICS: A NETNOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS ON A COVID-19 FACEBOOK SITE

This study aims to gain insight into Covid-19 infodemic in online communities. For this purpose, a netnographic study was conducted on a Covid-19 specific Facebook site broadcasting in Turkish language. In this context, what kind of content people are exposed to on this site, how they react to the contents and participate in discussions, and how these content, and discussions differ from those around the world were examined. As a result of the thematic coding, it was seen that the themes concentrated on 9 main themes: Precautions, Emotions, Government / Governance, Medicine / Science, Conspiracy Theories, Media, Risk, Business / Money, Ideology, and Religion. When examined in terms of variety and nature, it was seen that the content shared on the site and the discussions shape mainly around masks, Bill Gates, and irony / mockery expressions.


INTRODUCTION
As emerged back in November 2019, Covid-19 is currently on the agenda of the whole world. Since the beginning of 2020, the governments, press & media, scientific institutions, and corporations from around the world are alert as well as people. As Covid-19 has been spreading, the amount of conversations about it has also been on the rise.
Social media is a major channel for news and information sharing. While there are 7.7 billion people in the world, 3.5 billion of these are online; which means social media platforms are used by one-in-three people in the world, and more than two-thirds of all internet users (Ortiz-Ospina, 2019). Facebook seems it dominates the social media ecosystem with more than 2 billion users.
In contrast to traditional media like newspapers, TV, radio, etc., which provide a one-directional information flow, social media allow people to have an interaction with each other. As virtual groups are formed as a result of these interactions, many different issues can be discussed by large masses of people. In spite of the fact that these groups sometimes lead to echo-chambers to be formed, these virtual platforms also represent a media for forming public opinion.
During Covid-19 pandemic, it is seen that social media is also a platform for sharing health information as well as misinformation, and disinformation -infodemic in short. As World Health Organization states, an infodemic is an overabundance of informationsome accurate and some notoccurring during an epidemic (World Health Organization, 2020).
This article aims to get an insight into the conversation taking place on Facebook, the most used social media platform in Turkey and in the world, by applying a qualitative analysis on a Covid-19 specific Facebook site. The most outstanding finding is that (1) the conversation taken place on the target Covid-19 page is mostly about mask usage and Bill & Melinda Gates, and (2) other than these two topics (mask and Gates), the nature and the context of the conversations differ from the general Covid-19 related conversations taken place in the world, especially in America, and Australia. .
in the U.S. During the survey, 15 true and 15 false news about Covid-19 were shown to the participants in random order. They were first asked their opinion as to whether a news shown to them is true or not (to best of their knowledge); and then asked if they would share that news. The results showed that people with less intellectual capacity and who usually rely on their intuitions fail to discern true and false content, and tend to spread fake information more. Currently, millions of people are getting information and changing ideas via online communities like groups, forums, social networking sites, and so on. Online connections and alignments are increasingly affecting our social behavior as citizens, as consumers, as friends and family, and as social beings (Kozinets, 2010, s. 13). For this reason, online communities are becoming more and more popular field for social researchers. The Covid-19 pandemic has also become a frequently shared issue in social media. For this reason, it would be meaningful to conduct a netnographic study to examine the reflection of the pandemic on social media.
Known by Kozinets, netnography is a method which aims to study the online communities and cultures. Netnography is similar to etnography with an only major difference that netnography focuses on online communities. Ethnography is the study of people in naturally occurring settings or 'fields' by means of methods which capture their social meanings and ordinary activities, involving the researcher participating directly in the setting, if not also the activities, in order to collect data in a systematic manner but without meaning being imposed on them externally (Brewer, 2000, s. 10). Referring to ethnography, Kozinets (2010) describes netnographic procedure as planning, entrée (formulating research question(s) and choosing the appropriate online community), gathering data, interpretation, and adhering to ethical standards (s.59).
The intention of this paper is to research how the specific Facebook audience discuss Covid-19 online, and what these conversations tell us about how the audience perceive the disease.
Research questions: This research explores the discourse (posts and comments) on a Covid-19 related Facebook page. The guiding questions of the research are as follows: • What type of information are people exposed to in these online communities?
• Which experiences, opinions, feelings, and attitudes about Covid-19 related information do people express?
• Which topics do these posts, and comments focus on most, and are they different from the ones discussed worldwide?

Procedure
This explorative netnographic study was conducted on a Facebook site "Corona Gerçeği (Corona Truth) -Corona news that is not on the agenda" which is liked by 820 people and followed by more than 8.000 people. The language of the site is Turkish. There are also a Twitter account, and a web page linked to the site. The study is a netnographic study, and the study only covers the posts and comments only on "Corona Truth Facebook Site".
The site has been open since May 2, 2020, and is still posting. In this study, the data represent the posts, and the arguments (comments) published for two months, between May 2 to June 29. After gathering the qualitative data through Facebook posts and comments, full transcripts were analyzed through content analysis using the QACDAS program, QDA-Miner Lite.
In qualitative studies, it is important that people who are experts in the field of qualitative research follow the study and provide critical feedback to the researcher. Feedback received from experts increases the reliability of qualitative research. For this purpose, ideas were exchanged with two experts in the field during this research process and the expert opinions of these people were taken into consideration.
With the light of the content and the field notes taken during the study period, a codebook was codified. At the end of the coding process, there appeared 9 basic themes: Precautions, Emotions, Government / Governance, Medicine / Science, Conspiracy Theories, Media, Risk, Business / Money, Ideology, and Religion. To prevent loss of meaning, the codes, the sub-codes, and example content were translated into English in the final phase of this study. Vitamin C * It is known that chloroquine and high doses of vitamin C damage erythrocytes that carry oxygen in the blood, namely red blood cells, in the "glucose 6 phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency". This is also called "Favism".
Immunity / Immune System * If this were a brand new virus, as claimed, our immune system would not have the chance to recognize this virus so quickly. * The immune systems of the people who are locked up at home are weakened due to fear and inactivity.
Vaccine(s) * Denmark imposes obligations on the upcoming vaccine. If you object, the security units will be able to raid your house and force you inoculation. * I am not against vaccines until the age of 16, but it is not clear what happens in vaccines for influenza or cervical cancer.
Other diseases (like Pneumonia, Dyspnoea) * These cases are more common when the underlying two factors coexist: hemolysis, microthrombia, and shortness of breath, without the typical symptoms of pneumonia.
Smoking * Most important of all; smokers please stop suicide blissfully. * Well, on any average day when you go out, how many times are you exposed to a smoker (s) on the street while walking?

Ethics
During the period of this study, close attention was paid to the ethical implications in data collection stage, field notes stage, and analysis stage. Not any single account and/or person is specifically investigated and/or contacted to. All argumentations among the users and the moderator are followed quietly, and without any interruption (lurking).
The necessary permission was taken from the moderator of the Facebook site in written form. In addition to the moderator's permission, an approval was taken from Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Committee of Sivas Cumhuriyet University.

Limitations
The Facebook site "Corona Facts" has been open since May 2, and is still posting. But the study covers the data from May 2 to June 29. In addition to the time boundary, the study covers a small purposeful sample -a single Covid-19 related Facebook site-, so it limits the findings' generalizability. However, a qualitative research does not always aim to generalize but to help the researcher gain an insight into the topic. Qualitative research, by nature, also has limitations in complete objectivity. Almost all qualitative researches include subjectivity at some scale, since it may be affected by the researchers own ideas, point of views, logic, and emotions.
Within the context of this specific research there are also other limitations. The first is, during the period of this study, some contexts (posts) were shared by the moderator more than once. Since every time the context had got visibility, and got different comments (in most cases from different users), each context was included separately in the study. The second is, many times external links (other web sites, news sites, YouTube videos, scientific and non-scientific articles, etc.) were included in the posts. The transcriptions were not done for these external links. Nevertheless, if these external links' contexts were "organically" shared as "contexts" in the page, the context was accepted as raw data, and included in the analysis. And the last limitation is, only the posts in text format was included in the analysis. Audiovisual content, like videos, gifs, and pictures, were not included in the analysis.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The final results of the research reveal that the most talked about topics in the site are masks (theme precaution), Gates (theme conspiracy theories), irony / mockery (theme emotions), government / policy (theme governance). As for the themes, below are the detailed analysis of the themes and topics.

Theme 1. Precautions:
Currently, the "mask, distance, hygiene trio" has been used as the health communication message. Nonetheless, in the current study, mask seems as the predominant theme. Among many Covid-19 precautions, including the "mask, distance, hygiene trio", masking is the one around which the most conversation is shaped (by 93%). In most of the cases, people are against the mask claiming that mask usage decreases the oxygen intake, it is hard to use masks, there is no evidence about the protection it supplies, etc.
In the study, there is almost no conversation about hygiene, washing hands for at least 20 seconds, and not touching face; which is very interesting. The reason behind that result could be Turkish people think they are very hygienic and it is not a specific topic to discuss.

Figure 1: Frequency of Theme 1-Precautions
As for the high percentage of conversation about mask, the reason behind it may lie under "availability heuristic". Since the beginning of the pandemic, Turkish people have many issues with masks. In the early times of the pandemic, mask supply chain was not efficient enough, and many people had difficulty finding mask. So, it would not be wrong to say that the mask subject has long been in people's heads.

Figure 2: Turkey Google Trends Search Result about Covid-19
Another reason why "mask" is a popular topic is that people can see, and feel the masks. It is solid and tangible. It is not like an invisible thing or concept. People see a lot of people wearing masks every day. They see mask tutorials on TV, web or on YouTube. They are obliged to use masks. But no one forbids them to hug or to wash their hands. So this precaution is at hand, and easily available to complain.
Secondly, and more expectedly, using mask is really discomforting. This is the crystal clear reason behind the conversations. And this explanation is the "Occam's Razor".

Theme 2. Emotions
When looked at the emotions it is seen that frequencies are almost fairly distributed. The dominant emotion is Irony/mockery (30%) followed by fear/panic (28%).

Figure 3: Frequency of Theme 2 -Emotions
In the specific Facebook site, Corona Truth, the conversations are mostly about the claim that Covid-19 is not a thing to exaggerate. The posts shared, the comments made are mostly defends this claim. There are many conversations claiming that people are deceived, and smart ones are awake and alert. For this reason, there are a lot of conversations with mockery/irony sentiment.
As for fear and panic, most content claim that people are purposefully driven to fear by government, WHO, and media.
Most of the thanking context (17%) comes from people who think the contexts and ideas confirm their beliefs. So it is possible to say that, thanking is closely related to "confirmation bias". Doubt (11%) is also mostly coming from confirmation (like in the sentence "however, the numbers are also doubtful").
As for the rest, hate, anger, and insult, the audience of the community do not seem quick-tempered but moderate people. The insults or hate feelings are mostly mild ones (like "dogs, donkeys, slaves". There are no F words, no racist words etc., with an only exception which is a homophobic insult "Mentally ill, homo. Playing god").

Theme 3. Government / Governance
Under the government theme, it is seen that government (43%) is criticized mostly for taking exaggerated precautions for Covid-19. As for WHO (39%), it is mostly blamed for the so-called Pandemic. It is also seen from the conversations and contexts that most precautions seem as a violation of human rights.

Figure 7: Frequency of Theme 2 -Medicine / Science
Vaccines, being the hot topic under this theme, are very frequently used word in everyday language. Currently, the whole world relies on the vaccine to be developed. So this result is an expected result. As for immunity, most arguments on the Corona Truth Facebook site about immunity claim that our immune system is strong enough to fight such a virus as it fights with seasonal flu and other infections. In spite of the fact that some low voices (comments) state it is just wishful thinking, they are really minority indeed.
It is seen that smoking is somehow important topic for the audience as Covid-19 is a respiratory virus infection, and people are aware of that (regardless of how serious one should take Covid-19 is) smoking is harmful, no doubt.
Under this theme, the most interesting topic is Chloroquine (and Vitamin-C in some cases). It is seen that the word Chloroquine is not mentioned by individuals. We see the word in the text shared as posts, not as comments. There may be two reasons for that, the first the audience may not know this compound since it is a chemical and sounds highly scientific, it is not like "aspirin". The second is the word is so complicated to say and to spell correctly. Even one knows it is a compound used for Covid-19 treatment, in order to make a comment about it one should have even a little scientific knowledge and confidence.

Theme 5. Conspiracy Theories
According to Cornell University Alliance for Science website (Cornell Alliance for Science, 2020), top 10 current conspiracy theories are; • Blaming 5G • Bill Gates as scapegoat • The virus escaped from a Chinese lab • Covid-19 was created as a biological weapon • The US military imported Covid-19 into China • GMOs (genetically modified organisms) are somehow to blame • Covid-19 doesn't actually exist • The pandemic is being manipulated by the 'deep state' • Covid-19 is a plot by Big Pharma • Covid-19 death rates are inflated As for the myths, there are a lot of myths about Covid-19 from around the world. World Health Organization (WHO) has compiled many of them as follows; However, in this current study, the results are as follows, Under this theme there are interesting results and insights. It can be said that Turkish people are more familiar to Microsoft programs than others, like macOS or Linux. People, in general, know Bill Gates (like they know Steve Jobs, another highly known celebrity). As far as it is known, there is no study exploring how Turkish people perceive Bill Gates, but ever since Bill Gates has been known together with Microsoft, and in case of a situation related to capitalism or conspiracy he also comes to minds. Covid-19 case is not different. When looked at the conversation on the site, Bill Gates (and Gates Foundation) is depicted as a person who wants to decrease world population (mostly because of his TED talk), as an investor who invests in weapon industry, a person who sacrifice a huge amount of money to change people's genes and so on. In general, people do not understand why Bill Gates, as a tech giant, is interested in world population. This bears many suspicious thoughts about Bill Gates in people's minds.
Under this theme it is seen that 5G Conspiracy Theory is the second popular by 14%, followed by Other Conspiracy Theories (10%), Filing Misleading Death Causes (8%), and Big Pharma (8%). All conspiracy theories are the ones almost whole world talks. So it is not surprising to see these conspiracy theories. Under this theme, what is the most surprising is that we cannot see any theories about "Plandemic" which is a conspiracy theory video, released on May 4, 2020, promoting misinformation about the Covid-19.
Throughout the transcript, there is only one "Plandemic" word in that comment (posted in June); "They could not get the profit they wanted from the illnesses they had planned such as Mad Cow, Swine Flu, Bird Flu, SARS, MERS in the past, they imprisoned eight billion people in their homes with a non-existent virus, Plandemic lie." Clearly, this sentence does not mean "Plandemic" in its literal meaning; the owner of the comment probably meant "Pandemic" not "Plandemic". It could be either she/he had the word in his/her mind and he/she understood the word wrong, or she/he made a fat finger error. So, this data was not counted in the analysis as "Plandemic Conspiracy Theory".   Turkish subtitles) via Whatsapp, Facebook, and other media. The video was so convincing, and during that times many people believed the claims asserted. However, it would be wrong to say that many Turkish people do not know what "Plandemic" is. The people in U.S., Canada, and New Zealand may be familiar with this conspiracy theory ( Figure 6). However, it is seen that Plandemic word was searched only in the three biggest cities in Turkey (Figure 7). So it is no surprise that Plandemic word does not mean a thing for Turkish people.
QAnon is also a conspiracy theory which is sometimes linked to Covid-19. The above thoughts are also valid for QAnon (see the figures below).  The most interesting finding under this theme is, the Corona Truth community do not mention anything claiming Covid-19 is a laboratory-made virus or as a biological weapon. There may be two reasons for that. The first is of popularity bias, resulting from an increased awareness of the condition within the general population, making a condition "fashionable" and more likely to be cited (Catalogue of Bias Collaboration, 2017). In the site, most conversations are shaped around Gates, and 5G. The second is the community does not believe such a conspiracy theory at all, which is less likely than the first reason.
Lastly, it is important to mention that according to a study investigating global network for discussing low credibility information about Covid-19, less credible information tends to stay within the country (Huang & Carley, 2020). In the same study it is also investigated where in the world are those who discuss low credibility information, however, it is hard to reach a solid conclusion because of the language differences among the countries.

Theme 6. Media
Under theme media, there are 3 sub-themes: Fake News (42%), Censorship (39%), and Misinformation / Verification (19%). Under fake news sub-theme, the statements are mostly about media releasing fake news about Covid-19. As for censorship, the statements are about Covid-19 truths are being censored. Lastly, for misinformation / verification, the statements are about Facebook erased the posts and comments which includes misinformation. Under theme Risk, fatality rate (80%), and infectiousness (20%) are seen. The content is mostly made up of fatality rate. The statements under this theme are mainly around the claims that Covid-19 is neither more fatal nor more infectious than seasonal influenza. Under Theme Business / Money, "Economy in general" sub-theme is expressed heavily (42%) followed by Service (25%), and Education (17%). As known, during the pandemic, the importance of medical services has much increased. However, in the research, the sub-theme "Medical Services" it is seen that medical services are not on the agenda at all. It is because owners of the posts and comments clearly do not believe the "so-called" pandemic created a huge amount of work for medical staff. Under the Theme Ideology, and Religion, two major sub-themes are seen; Capitalism (73%), and Religion (27%). Most conversation, under this theme, is about that the pandemic is a capitalism tool that aims to knock sense into the people. As for religion, most content is about that God is the only power, fate cannot be escaped, and people should pray for these days to pass.

CONCLUSION
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, increasing amount of infodemic has always been an issue. Worse, infodemic cannot be avoided and/or regulated, at all. The present study provides significant insight on the community's perceptions, emotions, and beliefs that can be regarded as Covid-19 infodemic at some points.
During the pandemic period, a great majority of people developed a feeling of fear and helplessness against the unknown. People tend to understand and try to explain this threat which they never expected. Most people believe that big events have big causes: There can be no simple explanation for a major problem like a pandemic that threatens the whole world. Especially when conspiracy theories are examined, it is possible to see the following feeling in people's expressions: "I see the big game. A lot of people are too stupid to see the big game, but I'm aware of everything". From this point on, it is possible to say that there is a serious confirmation bias in the content shared on the site. The manager and the audience tend to share the news that reflects their own beliefs, thus affirming their own beliefs quite often. Ostrich effect can also be seen from time to time in the content and comments shared on the site. Because people tend to avoid bad news heavily (like the number of deaths or people hospitalized).
While examining this specific study, it should be noted this study has its own limitations. It should be kept in mind that the limitations affect the generalizability of the results. The study covers the data from May 2 to June 29. In addition to the time boundary, the study covers a small purposeful sample so it limits the findings' generalizability. Audiovisual content, and inorganic external links were excluded. In addition, qualitative research, by nature, also has limitations in complete objectivity.
As a result of the content analysis, when the most shared and spoken topics in the community are examined, the main themes that stand out are seen as: mask, Bill Gates, irony, government, WHO, and 5G. These themes' high rating is of course an expected result, but it is also a significant result that these themes appear much more dominantly than many other themes. The reason why these themes are talked about so much is of course that they are important topics for the audience, but another reason is probably the popularity bias. These topics get such high visibility on the site that sharing other topics is no longer considered necessary.

FUTURE RESEARCH
So, with reference to this research, it is possible to make additional, and maybe more comprehensive studies. According to a current report (We are Social & Hootsuite, 2020), there are 37 million Facebook users in Turkey, and Turkey is among the top 10 countries using Facebook with 37 million users, and ranks first in Europe. This was the first reason for choosing Facebook as the research media (and the second reason was data retrieval and lurking the audience on Facebook was much easier). Considering that this study was run only on a specific Facebook site, it is evident that similar researches can be performed on the other popular social media communities. In addition, it may be interesting to see how the results differ for different countries and/or cultures according to Hofstede's cultural dimensions, regimes of the countries, religions, geographies, and economics.
It will probably be interesting to make an additional study to reveal the education level of the audience and to measure critical thinking skills of the audience (since during the study the author witnessed and noted that there are many arguments with logical mistakes, fallacies, biases as well as wrong spelling, grammar mistakes, and incorrect sentence forms).