Hashtag campaigns during the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia: escalating from online to offline

Abstract

This paper is an in-depth study into the hashtag campaigns on Twitter that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia. According to the 2021 statistics from DataReportal, a data analysis website, there are about 28 million active social media users in Malaysia, which amounts to 86 per cent of the total population.28 Of this number, almost half (49 per cent) are on Twitter, with its users using the moniker Twitterjaya to describe their virtual community. Thus, Twitter is a useful platform to gauge public sentiment in Malaysia, especially during the COVID-19 crisis when most were forced to stay at home under the movement control orders (MCOs); they turned to social media to obtain information about the pandemic, and to vent their feelings on their situation.