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Defining facets of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic: Twitter analysis
OBJECTIVES: Using Twitter, we aim to (1) define and quantify the prevalence and evolution of facets of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic in the US in a spatiotemporal context and (2) examine amplified tweets among social distancing facets. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We analyzed English and...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Elsevier Inc.
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7553881/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33065264 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2020.103601 |
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author | Kwon, Jiye Grady, Connor Feliciano, Josemari T. Fodeh, Samah J. |
author_facet | Kwon, Jiye Grady, Connor Feliciano, Josemari T. Fodeh, Samah J. |
author_sort | Kwon, Jiye |
collection | PubMed |
description | OBJECTIVES: Using Twitter, we aim to (1) define and quantify the prevalence and evolution of facets of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic in the US in a spatiotemporal context and (2) examine amplified tweets among social distancing facets. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We analyzed English and US-based tweets containing “coronavirus” between January 23-March 24, 2020 using the Twitter API. Tweets containing keywords were grouped into six social distancing facets: implementation, purpose, social disruption, adaptation, positive emotions, and negative emotions. RESULTS: A total of 259,529 unique tweets were included in the analyses. Social distancing tweets became more prevalent from late January to March but were not geographically uniform. Early facets of social distancing appeared in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle: the first cities impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak. Tweets related to the “implementation” and “negative emotions” facets largely dominated in combination with topics of “social disruption” and “adaptation”, albeit to lesser degree. Social disruptiveness tweets were most retweeted, and implementation tweets were most favorited. DISCUSSION: Social distancing can be defined by facets that respond to and represent certain events in a pandemic, including travel restrictions and rising case counts. For example, Miami had a low volume of social distancing tweets but grew in March corresponding with the rise of COVID-19 cases. CONCLUSION: The evolution of social distancing facets on Twitter reflects actual events and may signal potential disease hotspots. Our facets can also be used to understand public discourse on social distancing which may inform future public health measures. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7553881 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Elsevier Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-75538812020-10-14 Defining facets of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic: Twitter analysis Kwon, Jiye Grady, Connor Feliciano, Josemari T. Fodeh, Samah J. J Biomed Inform Article OBJECTIVES: Using Twitter, we aim to (1) define and quantify the prevalence and evolution of facets of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic in the US in a spatiotemporal context and (2) examine amplified tweets among social distancing facets. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We analyzed English and US-based tweets containing “coronavirus” between January 23-March 24, 2020 using the Twitter API. Tweets containing keywords were grouped into six social distancing facets: implementation, purpose, social disruption, adaptation, positive emotions, and negative emotions. RESULTS: A total of 259,529 unique tweets were included in the analyses. Social distancing tweets became more prevalent from late January to March but were not geographically uniform. Early facets of social distancing appeared in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle: the first cities impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak. Tweets related to the “implementation” and “negative emotions” facets largely dominated in combination with topics of “social disruption” and “adaptation”, albeit to lesser degree. Social disruptiveness tweets were most retweeted, and implementation tweets were most favorited. DISCUSSION: Social distancing can be defined by facets that respond to and represent certain events in a pandemic, including travel restrictions and rising case counts. For example, Miami had a low volume of social distancing tweets but grew in March corresponding with the rise of COVID-19 cases. CONCLUSION: The evolution of social distancing facets on Twitter reflects actual events and may signal potential disease hotspots. Our facets can also be used to understand public discourse on social distancing which may inform future public health measures. Elsevier Inc. 2020-11 2020-10-14 /pmc/articles/PMC7553881/ /pubmed/33065264 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2020.103601 Text en © 2020 Elsevier Inc. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Kwon, Jiye Grady, Connor Feliciano, Josemari T. Fodeh, Samah J. Defining facets of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic: Twitter analysis |
title | Defining facets of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic: Twitter analysis |
title_full | Defining facets of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic: Twitter analysis |
title_fullStr | Defining facets of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic: Twitter analysis |
title_full_unstemmed | Defining facets of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic: Twitter analysis |
title_short | Defining facets of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic: Twitter analysis |
title_sort | defining facets of social distancing during the covid-19 pandemic: twitter analysis |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7553881/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33065264 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2020.103601 |
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