  Twitter is becoming an increasingly important platform for disseminating
information during crisis situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Effective
crisis communication on Twitter can shape the public perception of the crisis,
influence adherence to preventative measures, and thus affect public health.
Influential accounts are particularly important as they reach large audiences
quickly. This study identifies influential German-language accounts from almost
3 million German tweets collected between January and May 2020 by constructing
a retweet network and calculating PageRank centrality values. We capture the
volatility of crisis communication by structuring the analysis into seven
stages based on key events during the pandemic and profile influential accounts
into roles. Our analysis shows that news and journalist accounts were
influential throughout all phases, while government accounts were particularly
important shortly before and after the lockdown was instantiated. We discuss
implications for crisis communication during health crises and for analyzing
long-term crisis data.
