Social media presents a robust stage for disseminating time-sensitive information that is needed during a public health disease of global concern such as COVID-19. This study finds out how the 23 anglophone Sub-Saharan African countries’ national health ministries and infectious disease agencies disseminated COVID-19 related information through their social media accounts within the first three months after the declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic by the World Health Organization. COVID-19 related qualitative and quantitative data types were collected from the social media accounts of the surveyed national health ministries and agencies for analysis. Over 86% of the African countries had presence on social media; Facebook was the most popular, though Twitter contained more posts. One of the credibility issues that was noticed is that most of the health ministries’ and agencies’ social media accounts were unverified and access to the social media accounts was not provided on most of their official websites. Information dissemination became more deliberate and increased significantly after the announcement of the fist cases of COVID-19 in the countries under review. Awareness creation, updates and news constituted the major categories of information that were disseminated, mostly in the form of derivative social media information before the announcement of the first COVID-19 case in the surveyed African countries. Campaigns against misinformation were barely undertaken by most of the countries. Strategies used by some countries included the employment of social media influencers and creation of content in local languages. Strategies that include development of health information content that targets different groups in African societies and the inclusion of elderly in the community and religious leaders as non-state actors in health information communication were recommended.

This study investigated the trends in the scope and subject classifications of library and information science research from authors that are affiliated with institutions in Africa. Library and information science journal articles and conference proceedings from the 54 African countries that were published between 2006 and 2015 and indexed in the Web of Science were retrieved for the study. After the removal of non-relevant articles and articles that were not available online, the library and information science publications were classified based on subject and scope. Results from the analysis of author keywords, country of affiliation, subject and scope classification were also visualized in network maps and bar charts. Frequency analysis shows that though computer science had the most profound influence on Africa’s library and information science research, its influence came to prominence in 2004. Furthermore, North African countries exhibited features that are different from the rest of Africa; they contributed most on core computer classifications while other African countries focused more on the social science-related aspects of library and information science. Unlike other regions in Africa, the North African countries also formed a dense collaboration cluster with strong interests in subjects that are conceptual and global in scope. The collaboration clustering analysis revealed an influence of some colonial languages of as a basis for forging strong collaboration between African and non-African countries. On the other hand, African countries tend to collaborate more with countries in their regions. Lastly, human computer interaction and library and information science history subject classifications were almost nonexistent. It is recommended that further studies should investigate why certain subject classifications are not well represented.

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The study investigated the structural qualities of the dominant virtual Twitter communities enduring in the aftermath of a natural disaster and how they influence the flow of information among social actors in the network. By employing a combination of textual and social network analyses on tweets associated with Hurricane Dorian, the study reinforces the findings of previous studies that information propagation is determined by nature of interactional communities built in the different stages of an emergency event and that sentiments and choice of user message keywords follow along the lines of geographical proximity to the affected zones. Engagements among social actors led to formation of virtual communities that were found to be dominated by hierarchical, polarized and insulated structural features which characteristically determine their information propagation patterns. These information community clusters demonstrate highly defined boundaries with sparse overlaps. Also, political and media actors demonstrate the most influences during this phase of the disaster. Implications of these findings for both research and practice as well as the limitations of research findings were discussed. L'étude a examiné les caracteristiques structurelles des communautés virtuelles dominantes sur Twitter suite à une catastrophe naturelle et comment elles influencent le flux d'informations entre les acteurs du réseau. En employant une combinaison d'analyses textuelles et de réseaux sociaux sur les tweets associés à l'ouragan Dorian, l'étude renforce les conclusions des recherches antérieures selon lesquelles la propagation de l'information est déterminée par la nature des communautés interactionnelles construites aux différentes étapes d'une urgence et que les émotions et le choix de mots-clés des utilisateurs sont liés au degré de proximité géographique des zones touchées. L'engagement des acteurs conduit à la formation de communautés virtuelles qui se s'avèrent dominées par des caractéristiques structurelles hiérarchiques, polarisées et isolées qui déterminent les modes de propagation de l'information. Ces communautés présentent des limites très définies avec des chevauchements éparses. De plus, les acteurs politiques et médiatiques sont ceux qui ont le plus d'influence durant la catastrophe. Les implications de ces résultats pour la recherche et la pratique ainsi que les limites des résultats de la recherche sont discutés.