A first look at COVID-19 information and misinformation sharing on Twitter

Lisa Singh; Shweta Bansal; Leticia Bode; Ceren Budak; Guangqing Chi; Kornraphop Kawintiranon; Colton Padden; Rebecca Vanarsdall; Emily Vraga; Yanchen Wang

A first look at COVID-19 information and misinformation sharing on Twitter

Lisa Singh, Shweta Bansal, Leticia Bode, Ceren Budak, Guangqing Chi, Kornraphop Kawintiranon, Colton Padden, Rebecca Vanarsdall, Emily Vraga, Yanchen Wang

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Abstract

Since December 2019, COVID-19 has been spreading rapidly across the world. Not surprisingly, conversation about COVID-19 is also increasing. This article is a first look at the amount of conversation taking place on social media, specifically Twitter, with respect to COVID-19, the themes of discussion, where the discussion is emerging from, myths shared about the virus, and how much of it is connected to other high and low quality information on the Internet through shared URL links. Our preliminary findings suggest that a meaningful spatio-temporal relationship exists between information flow and new cases of COVID-19, and while discussions about myths and links to poor quality information exist, their presence is less dominant than other crisis specific themes. This research is a first step toward understanding social media conversation about COVID-19.

Original language	Undefined/Unknown
Journal	arxiv
State	Published - Mar 31 2020

Access to Document

2003.13907v1

Cite this

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title = "A first look at COVID-19 information and misinformation sharing on Twitter",

abstract = " Since December 2019, COVID-19 has been spreading rapidly across the world. Not surprisingly, conversation about COVID-19 is also increasing. This article is a first look at the amount of conversation taking place on social media, specifically Twitter, with respect to COVID-19, the themes of discussion, where the discussion is emerging from, myths shared about the virus, and how much of it is connected to other high and low quality information on the Internet through shared URL links. Our preliminary findings suggest that a meaningful spatio-temporal relationship exists between information flow and new cases of COVID-19, and while discussions about myths and links to poor quality information exist, their presence is less dominant than other crisis specific themes. This research is a first step toward understanding social media conversation about COVID-19. ",

author = "Lisa Singh and Shweta Bansal and Leticia Bode and Ceren Budak and Guangqing Chi and Kornraphop Kawintiranon and Colton Padden and Rebecca Vanarsdall and Emily Vraga and Yanchen Wang",

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language = "Undefined/Unknown",

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TY - JOUR

T1 - A first look at COVID-19 information and misinformation sharing on Twitter

AU - Singh, Lisa

AU - Bansal, Shweta

AU - Bode, Leticia

AU - Budak, Ceren

AU - Chi, Guangqing

AU - Kawintiranon, Kornraphop

AU - Padden, Colton

AU - Vanarsdall, Rebecca

AU - Vraga, Emily

AU - Wang, Yanchen

N1 - 24 pages, 13 figures

PY - 2020/3/31

Y1 - 2020/3/31

N2 - Since December 2019, COVID-19 has been spreading rapidly across the world. Not surprisingly, conversation about COVID-19 is also increasing. This article is a first look at the amount of conversation taking place on social media, specifically Twitter, with respect to COVID-19, the themes of discussion, where the discussion is emerging from, myths shared about the virus, and how much of it is connected to other high and low quality information on the Internet through shared URL links. Our preliminary findings suggest that a meaningful spatio-temporal relationship exists between information flow and new cases of COVID-19, and while discussions about myths and links to poor quality information exist, their presence is less dominant than other crisis specific themes. This research is a first step toward understanding social media conversation about COVID-19.

AB - Since December 2019, COVID-19 has been spreading rapidly across the world. Not surprisingly, conversation about COVID-19 is also increasing. This article is a first look at the amount of conversation taking place on social media, specifically Twitter, with respect to COVID-19, the themes of discussion, where the discussion is emerging from, myths shared about the virus, and how much of it is connected to other high and low quality information on the Internet through shared URL links. Our preliminary findings suggest that a meaningful spatio-temporal relationship exists between information flow and new cases of COVID-19, and while discussions about myths and links to poor quality information exist, their presence is less dominant than other crisis specific themes. This research is a first step toward understanding social media conversation about COVID-19.

M3 - Article

JO - arxiv

JF - arxiv

ER -