Since December 1st, there have been 264 million Tweets around the Coronavirus, and the numbers are still growing. We’re still only at the beginning of this upheaval. Healthcare organizations need to start engaging with people who can deliver their messages, in the manner required, to the people who need to hear them – influencers are the way to do this.
Cutting through all of the noise has been a huge challenge for health organizations around the world, as they try to get a handle on the conversation and communication element of this healthcare crisis. So to help, we’ve combed through all of this information and disinformation to bring you the Top 100 Healthcare Professionals influencing the Coronavirus conversation.
There are 2 people of note who are having a large influence on the conversation, but do not have active twitter accounts:
Dr John Campbell – Whose YouTube videos are being watched thousands of times in 2 Reddit threads
Michael Osterholm – Director of CIDRAP, who appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast on the 10th of March, and has received more than 10 million views
Almost all people on this list are either healthcare professionals or scientists with a background in a subject that is related to the Coronavirus (from Networks, to Public Health, even Law), or where they are not, they are in a senior position of a Medical/Healthcare/Epidemiology Organization. Journalists (or persons whose role is now predominantly as a speaker/journalist/author) have been excluded from this list and will be on a subsequent list.
Mapping the Community
For this report we analyzed 264 million Tweets looking at posts from 1st Dec 2019 to 13th March 2020 to bring you the this list. Below is a network map showing the online conversation around Coronavirus, made using the Onalytica platform, with the top influencer, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at the centre.
Top Healthcare Professionals
We looked at all the individuals and brands engaging on Twitter to bring you a list of the top influential experts discussing Coronavirus. Below we have a list of the top 10 influencers discussing the Coronavirus online. If you’d like to see the whole list, be sure to download the full report.
| Rank | Twitter Handle | Name | Organization | Influencer Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | @DrTedros | Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus | World Health Organisation | 100 |
| 2 | @DrEricDing | Eric Feigl-Ding | Federation of American Scientists | 61.45 |
| 3 | @ScottGottliebMD | Scott Gottlieb | American Enterprise Institute | 51.33 |
| 4 | @mlipsitch | Marc Lipsitch | Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard | 51.2 |
| 5 | @JeremyFarrar | Jeremy Farrar | Welcome Trust | 49.38 |
| 6 | @DrDenaGrayson | Dena Grayson | MedExpert Consulting, Inc. | 47.4 |
| 7 | @profvrr | Vincent Racaniello | University of Columbia | 46.54 |
| 8 | @MackayIM | Ian M. MacKay | University of Queensland | 45.03 |
| 9 | @mvankerkhove | Maria Van Kerkhove | World Health Organisation | 42.25 |
| 10 | @trvrb | Trevor Bedford | Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center | 40.36 |
Disclaimer: As ever with these lists, it must be stressed that the ranking correlates to a strong indication of influence. The individuals listed here are undoubtedly influential when it comes to driving discussion around the above key topics. Onalytica’s PageRank based methodology is used to extract influential experts on a particular topic and takes into account the number and quality of contextual references that a user receives – this allows us to identify Topical Authority (reference) – our priority influence metric. We analyzed topical authority via their social engagement on Twitter and how much influential experts were referenced in association with Coronavirus on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Forums, Blogs, News and Tumblr content. These calculations also take into account a user’s resonance (topical engagement) relevance (number of posts on topic, and % relevance – the proportion of their social content on the topic) and reach (number of followers). If you want to learn more, please read our article that outlines How to identify your target influencers.
At Onalytica we love building these lists and want to give back to our loyal readers as much as we can. If you’re interested in other topics (such as Virtual Reality, Digital Health, Digital Marketing) be sure to have a look on our blog or why not propose some topics to us on Twitter? Effective influencer marketing starts with identifying relevant influential experts for your brand. Onalytica’s Discovery platform mines over 200 billion posts a year into a curated database of over 700K global social media influencers, including data from Twitter, Blogs, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn Profile Links + Demographic Data. Our software enables you to identify influencers by topic, demographic or content and includes real-time tracking and measurement reporting to scale your influencer relations.
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