CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
 BACKGROUND OF STUDY
The Coronavirus (Covid-19) is an infectious disease causes respiratory infections ranging from the common cold to more severe respiratory difficulties. It originated from the Hunan seafood market at Wuhan, China where live bats, snakes, raccoon dogs, wild animals among others were sold in December 2019 (Shereen et al., 2020, pp. 91–98) and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on 11 March 2020 (WHO, 2020). Since its identification, the virus is said to have accounted for about 512,311 deaths globally out of a swooping statistic of 10,514,028 positive cases which sadly increases exponentially daily (WHO, 2020). The first victim of the virus in Nigeria was an Italian man who arrived in the country on the 25 February 2020. He was admitted to an Isolation Centre in Yaba Lagos after showing symptoms of the virus (NCDC 2020). Subsequently, the cases increased.
As the world finds itself in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, social media has become inundated with content associated with the virus (Hieken 2020). Although all social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, blogs) were providing disseminating information about the Covid-19 and medical content, perhaps no other social media consistently played a more prominent role as at that period than Twitter (Hieken 2020).
Twitter is a microblogging and social networking service where users post messages using “tweets” that are limited to 240 characters. Twitter however promotes interaction and public participation over various issues of human concerns. Therefore, the unhindered interactive nature of Twitter has given vast opportunities to the public to engage in interactions and dissemination of information over several issues (Micheal 2002). For well over a decade, Twitter has become increasingly used as a platform where individuals exchange ideas, information, and commentary. The hashtag #FOAMed garners thousands of tweets per hour, and at this momentous period in medical history, no subject is more prominent than COVID-19. With the free-flow of messages, and information about the world’s drastic measures towards Covid-19. Hence this researched is geared towards assessing the role of Twitter on Covid-19 Information Dissemination to the Populace.
1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
In the Nigerian context, Twitter among other social media is a means of keeping up with occurrences all over the globe and is used to shed light as regards the Nigerian situation. The penetration of Twitter is quite extensive in Nigeria particularly since the advent of cheap android smartphones telephony. What is worrisome is how to sieve authentic information from an avalanche of half-truths and false information available on Twitter networks.
The Covid-19 and the lockdown policies introduced by the government made people to be solely dependent on the media, thus the influence the Twitter had during this period on information dissemination have not been attained in any other pandemic. Therefore it is upon this note that this study is carried out.