COVID-19 in the Twitterverse, from epidemic to pandemic: information-sharing behavior and Twitter as an information carrier

Abstract

In this study, we defined a Twitter network as an information channel that includes information sources containing embedded messages. We conducted stage-based comparative analyses of Twitter networks during three periods: the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, the period when the epidemic was becoming a global phenomenon, and the beginning of the pandemic. We also analyzed the characteristics of scientific information sources and content on Twitter during the sample period. At the beginning of the epidemic, Twitter users largely shared trustworthy news information sources about the novel coronavirus. Widely shared scientific information focused on clinical investigations and case studies of the new coronavirus as the disease became a pandemic while non-scientific information sources and messages illustrated the social and political aspects of the global outbreak, often including emotional elements. Multiple suspicious, bot-like Twitter accounts were identified as a great connector of the COVID-19 Twitterverse, particularly in the beginning of the global crisis. Our findings suggest that the information carriers, which are information channels, sources, and messages were coherently interlocked, forming an information organism. The study results can help public health organizations design communication strategies, which often require prompt decision-making to manage urgent needs under the circumstances of an epidemic.

Census of Twitter users: Scraping and describing the national network of South Korea

“…The bot rate is much higher than previous results for English-language tweets (13.2% [ 57 ] and 15% [ 22 ]). However, considering the culture difference of South Korean [ 58 – 60 ], our results are quite similar to previous results for Asian-language tweets (52% for Indonesia, 52% for Philipplines, 71% for Singapore, and 63% for Taiwan, with a BotHunter threshold of .5) [ 61 ].…”

Introduction to the Minitrack on Digital-Enabled Human-Information Interaction

“…Individuals also use social media to share experiences, receive, and enable social, informational, and emotional support within Reddit [4]. Social media research within the health-related domain focuses on different topics, such as chronic disease (e.g., diabetes, heart disease) [5,6,7] but also on infectious disease outbreaks, such Swine flu [8,9], and in the last years on COVID-19 [10,11,12,13,14].…”

Delving into Data Science Methods in Response to the COVID‐19 Infodemic

“…The COVID-19 pandemic was dubbed as a "digital pandemic" because of the circulation of myriad of information from diverse digital platforms (Banerjee & Meena, 2021;Chong & Park, 2021). With more than three billion regular users, social media has become the dominant source of information and main instruments for communication during the prolonged pandemic crisis (Chong & Park, 2021;Tankovska, 2022, January 28).…”