By Rachel Lerman
San Francisco - For many world leaders, it would be novel to inform the public on Twitter that they had contracted a dangerous disease.
But President Donald Trump - a prolific tweeter for years - has upended many traditions when it comes to sharing his thoughts directly with followers on social media. And Trump's tweet early Friday morning announcing he and the first lady had tested positive for the novel coronavirus stuck to his pattern of using the platform to inform the public of news, big and small.
The tweet quickly appeared to become his most shared ever, racking up more than 887,000 retweets and 1.6 million likes by late Friday afternoon, according to social media analytics company Tweet Binder and researchers.
"The fact that Donald Trump broke the info on Twitter indicates that this is his mode of choice for communicating with the American people about the most serious things," said Samuel Woolley, a professor and director of a propaganda research team at the University of Texas at Austin.
Trump has one of the most popular Twitter accounts in the world, with 86.6 million followers. He uses the site to broadcast his thoughts on issues, promote his campaign for presidency and attack his critics. Even as Twitter invoked Trump's rage earlier this year by slapping fact checks and labels on his tweets, Trump kept tweeting multiple times each day.
That's unlikely to stop during his quarantine, especially if his symptoms remain mild, social media experts who follow his account say. It may even give him more time to tweet. Trump has been known to tweet more during times of rest or travel over the past few years, Woolley said.
"I bet that once he has his feet under him, assuming his case is relatively mild, he's going to be tweeting more than ever," said social media researcher and Clemson University professor Darren Linvill.
It's not just the president. Shelter-in-place and quarantine restrictions this year have proven that people turn to social media more often when they're stuck inside. In the early weeks of the pandemic, Twitter reported that its number of daily users increased 23% from the year before to 164 million people.
The site has also become a popular chat room for health experts to share information about the pandemic, and for people to outline their own stories about battling the disease.
Other world leaders have already set an example for how to manage social media while battling the coronavirus this year. When British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, also a prolific user of Twitter, caught the virus, he updated followers on his condition regularly on the platform. That included when he entered the hospital. Similarly, Mexico President Jair Bolsonaro continued tweeting through his brush with the virus in July, announcing in a tweet when he finally tested negative.
Trump has tweeted, on average, 37 times a day for the past 90 days, Linvill calculated. But he hasn't yet tweeted since his bombshell announcement just before 1 a.m. Friday. That's unusual for him, but it could just be because he is assessing the situation and deciding what it means for his campaign, Linvill said.
It's unlikely the silence will last, unless the president develops more serious symptoms. Trump relies on the site to rally his supporters and communicate with the public at large.
"For him to give that up when he's just more than 30 days out from the election, that would be unthinkable to me," Woolley said.
The Washington Post