  The ongoing, fluid nature of the COVID-19 pandemic requires individuals to
regularly seek information about best health practices, local community
spreading, and public health guidelines. In the absence of a unified response
to the pandemic in the United States and clear, consistent directives from
federal and local officials, people have used social media to collectively
crowdsource COVID-19 elites, a small set of trusted COVID-19 information
sources. We take a census of COVID-19 crowdsourced elites in the United States
who have received sustained attention on Twitter during the pandemic. Using a
mixed methods approach with a panel of Twitter users linked to public U.S.
voter registration records, we find that journalists, media outlets, and
political accounts have been consistently amplified around COVID-19, while
epidemiologists, public health officials, and medical professionals make up
only a small portion of all COVID-19 elites on Twitter. We show that COVID-19
elites vary considerably across demographic groups, and that there are notable
racial, geographic, and political similarities and disparities between various
groups and the demographics of their elites. With this variation in mind, we
discuss the potential for using the disproportionate online voice of
crowdsourced COVID-19 elites to equitably promote timely public health
information and mitigate rampant misinformation.
