Political campaigns, advocacy groups, and the public all use these platforms in parallel with traditional venues of TV, radio, print media, community and organization meetings, rallies, and protests to vie for attention and promote their views. Online social media platforms have proved to be powerful tools in the dissemination of information, expression of opinion, and in the shaping of public discourse. Our work provides insights into the organization of opposing sides of the Twitter debate and discussions over responses to the COVID-19 emergency and helps set the stage for further work in this area. In contrast, the Anti-Protest side is more reactive, has a larger presence of verified account activity (both as actors and targets), and appears to have been more successful in spreading its message in terms of both tweet volume and in attracting more regular type users. We then compare the users in each group and their actions and find that the Pro-Protest side acts more proactively, is more centrally organized, engages with the opposing side less, and appears to rely more on bot-like or troll-like users. We find that these opposing groups mirror the partisan divide regarding the protests in their use of specific phrases and in their sharing of external links. Here, we analyze the Pro- and Anti-Protest sides of the Twitter discussion surrounding the first few weeks of the anti-lockdown protests in the United States.

Special attention has been paid to the role these tools play in times of emergency and important public decision-making events such as during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Twitter and other social media platforms are important tools for competing groups to push their preferred messaging and respond to opposing views.

Operation gridlock