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Early warnings of COVID-19 outbreaks across Europe from social media?

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  • Milena Lopreite
  • Pietro Panzarasa
  • Michelangelo Puliga
  • Massimo Riccaboni

Abstract

We analyze data from Twitter to uncover early-warning signals of COVID-19 outbreaks in Europe in the winter season 2019-2020, before the first public announcements of local sources of infection were made. We show evidence that unexpected levels of concerns about cases of pneumonia were raised across a number of European countries. Whistleblowing came primarily from the geographical regions that eventually turned out to be the key breeding grounds for infections. These findings point to the urgency of setting up an integrated digital surveillance system in which social media can help geo-localize chains of contagion that would otherwise proliferate almost completely undetected.

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  • Milena Lopreite & Pietro Panzarasa & Michelangelo Puliga & Massimo Riccaboni, 2020. "Early warnings of COVID-19 outbreaks across Europe from social media?," Papers 2008.02649, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2020.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2008.02649
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    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.02649
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    1. King-wa Fu & Yuner Zhu, 2020. "Did the world overlook the media’s early warning of COVID-19?," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(7-8), pages 1047-1051, August.
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