IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v20y2023i9p5753-d1142077.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Exploring Future Signals of COVID-19 and Response to Information Diffusion Using Social Media Big Data

Author

Listed:
  • Juyoung Song

    (Criminal Justice, Pennsylvania State University, Schuylkill, PA 17972, USA)

  • Dal-Lae Jin

    (Department of Public Health, Graduate School of Korea University & Transdisciplinary Major in Learning Health Systems, Korea University, Seoul 02841, Republic of Korea)

  • Tae Min Song

    (School of Industry and Environment, Gachon University, Seoul 13120, Republic of Korea)

  • Sang Ho Lee

    (CEO for HealthMax Co., Ltd., Seoul 06078, Republic of Korea)

Abstract

COVID-19 is a respiratory infectious disease that first reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. With COVID-19 spreading to patients worldwide, the WHO declared it a pandemic on 11 March 2020. This study collected 1,746,347 tweets from the Korean-language version of Twitter between February and May 2020 to explore future signals of COVID-19 and present response strategies for information diffusion. To explore future signals, we analyzed the term frequency and document frequency of key factors occurring in the tweets, analyzing the degree of visibility and degree of diffusion. Depression, digestive symptoms, inspection, diagnosis kits, and stay home obesity had high frequencies. The increase in the degree of visibility was higher than the median value, indicating that the signal became stronger with time. The degree of visibility of the mean word frequency was high for disinfectant, healthcare, and mask. However, the increase in the degree of visibility was lower than the median value, indicating that the signal grew weaker with time. Infodemic had a higher degree of diffusion mean word frequency. However, the mean degree of diffusion increase rate was lower than the median value, indicating that the signal grew weaker over time. As the general flow of signal progression is latent signal → weak signal → strong signal → strong signal with lower increase rate, it is necessary to obtain active response strategies for stay home, inspection, obesity, digestive symptoms, online shopping, and asymptomatic.

Suggested Citation

  • Juyoung Song & Dal-Lae Jin & Tae Min Song & Sang Ho Lee, 2023. "Exploring Future Signals of COVID-19 and Response to Information Diffusion Using Social Media Big Data," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(9), pages 1-11, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:9:p:5753-:d:1142077
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/9/5753/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/9/5753/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Per Block & Marion Hoffman & Isabel J. Raabe & Jennifer Beam Dowd & Charles Rahal & Ridhi Kashyap & Melinda C. Mills, 2020. "Social network-based distancing strategies to flatten the COVID-19 curve in a post-lockdown world," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 4(6), pages 588-596, June.
    2. Zeroual, Abdelhafid & Harrou, Fouzi & Dairi, Abdelkader & Sun, Ying, 2020. "Deep learning methods for forecasting COVID-19 time-Series data: A Comparative study," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    3. Islam, A.K.M. Najmul & Laato, Samuli & Talukder, Shamim & Sutinen, Erkki, 2020. "Misinformation sharing and social media fatigue during COVID-19: An affordance and cognitive load perspective," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    4. Seungil Yum, 2020. "Social Network Analysis for Coronavirus (COVID‐19) in the United States," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1642-1647, July.
    5. Mark J Siedner & Guy Harling & Zahra Reynolds & Rebecca F Gilbert & Sebastien Haneuse & Atheendar S Venkataramani & Alexander C Tsai, 2020. "Social distancing to slow the US COVID-19 epidemic: Longitudinal pretest–posttest comparison group study," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(8), pages 1-12, August.
    6. Zhao, Danling & Sun, Jianbin & Tan, Yuejin & Wu, Jianhong & Dou, Yajie, 2018. "An extended SEIR model considering homepage effect for the information propagation of online social networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 512(C), pages 1019-1031.
    7. Panagiotopoulos, Panos & Barnett, Julie & Bigdeli, Alinaghi Ziaee & Sams, Steven, 2016. "Social media in emergency management: Twitter as a tool for communicating risks to the public," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 86-96.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yun Jo & Andy Hong & Hyungun Sung, 2021. "Density or Connectivity: What Are the Main Causes of the Spatial Proliferation of COVID-19 in Korea?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(10), pages 1-16, May.
    2. Tayarani N., Mohammad-H., 2021. "Applications of artificial intelligence in battling against covid-19: A literature review," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    3. Rajeev K. Goel & Shoji Haruna, 2021. "Unmasking the demand for masks: Analytics of mandating coronavirus masks," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(3), pages 580-591, July.
    4. Badruddoza, Syed & Amin, Modhurima Dey, 2023. "Impacts of Teaching Modality on U.S. COVID-19 Spread in Fall 2020 Semester," Applied Economics Teaching Resources (AETR), Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 5(1), January.
    5. Masum, Mohammad & Masud, M.A. & Adnan, Muhaiminul Islam & Shahriar, Hossain & Kim, Sangil, 2022. "Comparative study of a mathematical epidemic model, statistical modeling, and deep learning for COVID-19 forecasting and management," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    6. Wang, Richard & Ye, Zhongnan & Lu, Miaojia & Hsu, Shu-Chien, 2022. "Understanding post-pandemic work-from-home behaviours and community level energy reduction via agent-based modelling," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 322(C).
    7. Shahadat Uddin & Arif Khan & Haohui Lu & Fangyu Zhou & Shakir Karim, 2022. "Suburban Road Networks to Explore COVID-19 Vulnerability and Severity," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(4), pages 1-9, February.
    8. An, Xuming & Ding, Li & Hu, Ping, 2020. "Information propagation with individual attention-decay effect on activity-driven networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 556(C).
    9. Han, Chunjia & Yang, Mu & Piterou, Athena, 2021. "Do news media and citizens have the same agenda on COVID-19? an empirical comparison of twitter posts," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    10. Oude Groeniger, Joost & Noordzij, Kjell & van der Waal, Jeroen & de Koster, Willem, 2021. "Dutch COVID-19 lockdown measures increased trust in government and trust in science: A difference-in-differences analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 275(C).
    11. Shuolin Geng & Qi Zhou & Mingjie Li & Dianxing Song & Yanjun Wen, 2021. "Spatial–temporal differences in disaster perception and response among new media users and the influence factors: a case study of the Shouguang Flood in Shandong province," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 105(2), pages 2241-2262, January.
    12. Matthew Spiegel & Heather Tookes, 2021. "Business Restrictions and COVID-19 Fatalities [The immediate effect of COVID-19 policies on social distancing behavior in the United States]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(11), pages 5266-5308.
    13. Liu, Hongfei & Liu, Wentong & Yoganathan, Vignesh & Osburg, Victoria-Sophie, 2021. "COVID-19 information overload and generation Z's social media discontinuance intention during the pandemic lockdown," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    14. Arora, Swapan Deep & Singh, Guninder Pal & Chakraborty, Anirban & Maity, Moutusy, 2022. "Polarization and social media: A systematic review and research agenda," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    15. Valerio Basile & Francesco Cauteruccio & Giorgio Terracina, 2021. "How Dramatic Events Can Affect Emotionality in Social Posting: The Impact of COVID-19 on Reddit," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-32, January.
    16. Xia, Huosong & Wang, Yuan & Zhang, Justin Zuopeng & Zheng, Leven J. & Kamal, Muhammad Mustafa & Arya, Varsha, 2023. "COVID-19 fake news detection: A hybrid CNN-BiLSTM-AM model," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 195(C).
    17. Viktoriia Shubina & Sylvia Holcer & Michael Gould & Elena Simona Lohan, 2020. "Survey of Decentralized Solutions with Mobile Devices for User Location Tracking, Proximity Detection, and Contact Tracing in the COVID-19 Era," Data, MDPI, vol. 5(4), pages 1-40, September.
    18. Xiaojin Xie & Kangyang Luo & Zhixiang Yin & Guoqiang Wang, 2021. "Nonlinear Combinational Dynamic Transmission Rate Model and Its Application in Global COVID-19 Epidemic Prediction and Analysis," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(18), pages 1-17, September.
    19. Ronnie Das & Wasim Ahmed, 2022. "Rethinking Fake News: Disinformation and Ideology during the time of COVID-19 Global Pandemic," IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, , vol. 11(1), pages 146-159, January.
    20. Khan, Syed Abdul Rehman & Razzaq, Asif & Yu, Zhang & Shah, Adeel & Sharif, Arshian & Janjua, Laeeq, 2022. "Disruption in food supply chain and undernourishment challenges: An empirical study in the context of Asian countries," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 82(PA).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:9:p:5753-:d:1142077. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.