Background: In March 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak has led to unprecedented panic buying phenomena across the globe, where social media has played a significant role in the dissemination of observations.

Purpose: We used Twitter data to qualitatively analyse Tweets related to panic buying of toilet paper during the crisis.

Methods: A dataset of n=255,171 Tweets were collected between 29th February to 29thMarch 2020. The n=4,081 with 10 or more Retweets were selected and separated into batches of 100 Tweets for analysis by adopting a grounded theory approach until a saturation was met.

Results: Five key themes emerged from our analysis of the dataset: 1) humour or sarcasm, 2) marketing or profiteering, 3) opinion and emotions, 4) personal experience, and 5) support or information.

Discussion: About half of the Tweets carried negative sentiments, expressing anger or frustration towards the deficiency of toilet paper and the frantic situation of toilet paper hoarding, which were among the most influential Tweets. The spontaneous contagion of fear and panic through social media could fuel psychological reactions in midst of crises.

Conclusions: Our study demonstrated the application of social media data, a contemporary research method to provide rapid infodemiology of public psychology. In a pandemic or crisis situation, real-time data could be monitored and content-analysed for authorities to promptly address public concerns and sentiments. Findings have implications on how the government and related stakeholders could monitor and react to what social media information can reveal about public psychology during a crisis.