Dataset Information

The COVID-19 Infodemic: Infodemiology Study Analyzing Stigmatizing Search Terms.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:In the context of the COVID-19 infodemic, the global profusion of monikers and hashtags for COVID-19 have found their way into daily communication and contributed to a backlash against China and the Chinese people. OBJECTIVE:This study examines public engagement in crisis communication about COVID-19 during the early epidemic stage and the practical strategy of social mobilization to mitigate the infodemic. METHODS:We retrieved the unbiased values of the top-ranked search phrases between December 30, 2019, and July 15, 2020, which normalized the anonymized, categorized, and aggregated samples from Google Search data. This study illustrates the most-searched terms, including the official COVID-19 terms, the stigmatized terms, and other controls, to measure the collective behavioral propensities to stigmatized terms and to explore the global reaction to the COVID-19 epidemic in the real world. We calculated the ratio of the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases to the regional population as the cumulative rate (R) of a specific country or territory and calculated the Gini coefficient (G) to measure the collective heterogeneity of crowd behavior. RESULTS:People around the world are using stigmatizing terms on Google Search, and these terms were used earlier than the official names. Many stigmatized monikers against China (eg, "Wuhan pneumonia," G=0.73; "Wuhan coronavirus," G=0.60; "China pneumonia," G=0.59; "China coronavirus," G=0.52; "Chinese coronavirus," G=0.50) had high collective heterogeneity of crowd behavior between December 30, 2019, and July 15, 2020, while the official terms "COVID-19" (G=0.44) and "SARS-CoV-2" (G=0.42) have not become de facto standard usages. Moreover, the pattern of high consistent usage was observed in 13 territories with low cumulative rates (R) between January 16 and July 15, 2020, out of 58 countries and territories that have reported confirmed cases of COVID-19. In the scientific literature, multifarious naming practices may have provoked unintended negative impacts by stigmatizing Chinese people. The World Health Organization; the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; and the media initiated campaigns for fighting back against the COVID-19 infodemic with the same mission but in diverse voices. CONCLUSIONS:Infodemiological analysis can articulate the collective propensities to stigmatized monikers across search behaviors, which may reflect the collective sentiment of backlash against China and Chinese people in the real world. The full-fledged official terms are expected to fight back against the resilience of negative perceptual bias amid the COVID-19 epidemic. Such official naming efforts against the infodemic should be met with a fair share of identification in scientific conventions and sociocultural paradigms. As an integral component of preparedness, appropriate nomenclatures should be duly assigned to the newly identified coronavirus, and social mobilization in a uniform voice is a priority for combating the next infodemic.

SUBMITTER: Hu Z

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7674145 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The COVID-19 Infodemic: Infodemiology Study Analyzing Stigmatizing Search Terms.

Hu Zhiwen Z Yang Zhongliang Z Li Qi Q Zhang An A

Journal of medical Internet research 20201116 11

<h4>Background</h4>In the context of the COVID-19 infodemic, the global profusion of monikers and hashtags for COVID-19 have found their way into daily communication and contributed to a backlash against China and the Chinese people.<h4>Objective</h4>This study examines public engagement in crisis communication about COVID-19 during the early epidemic stage and the practical strategy of social mobilization to mitigate the infodemic.<h4>Methods</h4>We retrieved the unbiased values of the top-rank ...[more]

PMID: 33156807

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Project description:BACKGROUND:The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is the latest pandemic of the digital age. With the internet harvesting large amounts of data from the general population in real time, public databases such as Google Trends (GT) and the Baidu Index (BI) can be an expedient tool to assist public health efforts. OBJECTIVE:The aim of this study is to apply digital epidemiology to the current COVID-19 pandemic to determine the utility of providing adjunctive epidemiologic information on outbreaks of this disease and evaluate this methodology in the case of future pandemics. METHODS:An epidemiologic time series analysis of online search trends relating to the COVID-19 pandemic was performed from January 9, 2020, to April 6, 2020. BI was used to obtain online search data for China, while GT was used for worldwide data, the countries of Italy and Spain, and the US states of New York and Washington. These data were compared to real-world confirmed cases and deaths of COVID-19. Chronologic patterns were assessed in relation to disease patterns, significant events, and media reports. RESULTS:Worldwide search terms for shortness of breath, anosmia, dysgeusia and ageusia, headache, chest pain, and sneezing had strong correlations (r>0.60, P<.001) to both new daily confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19. GT COVID-19 (search term) and GT coronavirus (virus) searches predated real-world confirmed cases by 12 days (r=0.85, SD 0.10 and r=0.76, SD 0.09, respectively, P<.001). Searches for symptoms of diarrhea, fever, shortness of breath, cough, nasal obstruction, and rhinorrhea all had a negative lag greater than 1 week compared to new daily cases, while searches for anosmia and dysgeusia peaked worldwide and in China with positive lags of 5 days and 6 weeks, respectively, corresponding with widespread media coverage of these symptoms in COVID-19. CONCLUSIONS:This study demonstrates the utility of digital epidemiology in providing helpful surveillance data of disease outbreaks like COVID-19. Although certain online search trends for this disease were influenced by media coverage, many search terms reflected clinical manifestations of the disease and showed strong correlations with real-world cases and deaths.

Project description:BackgroundSince the beginning of the new coronavirus pandemic, there has been much information about the disease and the virus has been in the spotlight, shared and commented upon on the Internet. However, much of this information is infodemics and can interfere with the advancement of the disease and that way that populations act. Thus, Brazil is a country that requires attention, as despite the fact that in almost two years of pandemic it has shown a devastating numbers of deaths and number of cases, and generates false, distorted and malicious news about the pandemic. This work intends to understand the attitudes of the Brazilian population using infodemic queries from the Google Trends search tool and social and income variables.MethodsData from infodemic research carried out on Google Trends, between January 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021, with socioeconomic data, such as income and education, were unified in a single database: standardization and exploratory and multivalued techniques based on grouping were used in the study.ResultsIn the analysis of the search trend of infodemic terms, it is clear that the categories of Prevention and Beliefs should stand out in Brazil, where there is a diverse culture. It is followed by the COVID-19 Treatment category, with treatments that were not those recommended by the authorities. Income transfer programs and information on socioeconomic variables did not have much impact on infodemic surveys, but it was observed that states where President Bolsonaro has more supporters had researched more infodemic information.ConclusionsIn a country as geographically large as Brazil, it is important that political authorities go to great lengths to disseminate reliable information and monitor the infodemic in the media and on the internet. It was concluded that the denial of the pandemic and the influence of political leaders influenced the search for infodemic information, contributing to a disorganization in the control of the disease and prevention measures.

Project description:BackgroundCoronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a novel viral illness that has rapidly spread worldwide. While the disease primarily presents as a respiratory illness, gastrointestinal symptoms such as diarrhea have been reported in up to one-third of confirmed cases, and patients may have mild symptoms that do not prompt them to seek medical attention. Internet-based infodemiology offers an approach to studying symptoms at a population level, even in individuals who do not seek medical care.ObjectiveThis study aimed to determine if a correlation exists between internet searches for gastrointestinal symptoms and the confirmed case count of COVID-19 in the United States.MethodsThe search terms chosen for analysis in this study included common gastrointestinal symptoms such as diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. Furthermore, the search terms fever and cough were used as positive controls, and constipation was used as a negative control. Daily query shares for the selected symptoms were obtained from Google Trends between October 1, 2019 and June 15, 2020 for all US states. These shares were divided into two time periods: pre-COVID-19 (prior to March 1) and post-COVID-19 (March 1-June 15). Confirmed COVID-19 case numbers were obtained from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering data repository. Moving averages of the daily query shares (normalized to baseline pre-COVID-19) were then analyzed against the confirmed disease case count and daily new cases to establish a temporal relationship.ResultsThe relative search query shares of many symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and constipation, remained near or below baseline throughout the time period studied; however, there were notable increases in searches for the positive control symptoms of fever and cough as well as for diarrhea. These increases in daily search queries for fever, cough, and diarrhea preceded the rapid rise in number of cases by approximately 10 to 14 days. The search volumes for these terms began declining after mid-March despite the continued rises in cumulative cases and daily new case counts.ConclusionsGoogle searches for symptoms may precede the actual rises in cases and hospitalizations during pandemics. During the current COVID-19 pandemic, this study demonstrates that internet search queries for fever, cough, and diarrhea increased prior to the increased confirmed case count by available testing during the early weeks of the pandemic in the United States. While the search volumes eventually decreased significantly as the number of cases continued to rise, internet query search data may still be a useful tool at a population level to identify areas of active disease transmission at the cusp of new outbreaks.

Project description:BackgroundThe internet has become an important source of health information for users worldwide. The novel coronavirus caused a pandemic search for information with broad dissemination of false or misleading health information.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to evaluate the quality and readability of online information about the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which was a trending topic on the internet, using validated instruments and relating the quality of information to its readability.MethodsThe search was based on the term "Wuhan Coronavirus" on the Google website (February 6, 2020). At the search time, the terms "COVID-19" or "SARS-CoV-2" (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) did not exist. Critical analysis was performed on the first 110 hits using the Health on the Net Foundation Code of Conduct (HONcode), the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) benchmark, the DISCERN instrument, and Google ranking.ResultsThe first 110 websites were critically analyzed, and only 1.8% (n=2) of the websites had the HONcode seal. The JAMA benchmark showed that 39.1% (n=43) of the websites did not have any of the categories required by this tool, and only 10.0% (11/110) of the websites had the four quality criteria required by JAMA. The DISCERN score showed that 70.0% (n=77) of the websites were evaluated as having a low score and none were rated as having a high score.ConclusionsNonhealth personnel and the scientific community need to be aware about the quality of the information they read and produce, respectively. The Wuhan coronavirus health crisis misinformation was produced by the media, and the misinformation was obtained by users from the internet. The use of the internet has a risk to public health, and, in cases like this, the governments should be developing strategies to regulate health information on the internet without censuring the population. By February 6, 2020, no quality information was available on the internet about COVID-19.

Project description:BackgroundThe COVID-19 infodemic has been disseminating rapidly on social media and posing a significant threat to people's health and governance systems.ObjectiveThis study aimed to investigate and analyze posts related to COVID-19 misinformation on major Chinese social media platforms in order to characterize the COVID-19 infodemic.MethodsWe collected posts related to COVID-19 misinformation published on major Chinese social media platforms from January 20 to May 28, 2020, by using PythonToolkit. We used content analysis to identify the quantity and source of prevalent posts and topic modeling to cluster themes related to the COVID-19 infodemic. Furthermore, we explored the quantity, sources, and theme characteristics of the COVID-19 infodemic over time.ResultsThe daily number of social media posts related to the COVID-19 infodemic was positively correlated with the daily number of newly confirmed (r=0.672, P<.01) and newly suspected (r=0.497, P<.01) COVID-19 cases. The COVID-19 infodemic showed a characteristic of gradual progress, which can be divided into 5 stages: incubation, outbreak, stalemate, control, and recovery. The sources of the COVID-19 infodemic can be divided into 5 types: chat platforms (1100/2745, 40.07%), video-sharing platforms (642/2745, 23.39%), news-sharing platforms (607/2745, 22.11%), health care platforms (239/2745, 8.71%), and Q&A platforms (157/2745, 5.72%), which slightly differed at each stage. The themes related to the COVID-19 infodemic were clustered into 8 categories: "conspiracy theories" (648/2745, 23.61%), "government response" (544/2745, 19.82%), "prevention action" (411/2745, 14.97%), "new cases" (365/2745, 13.30%), "transmission routes" (244/2745, 8.89%), "origin and nomenclature" (228/2745, 8.30%), "vaccines and medicines" (154/2745, 5.61%), and "symptoms and detection" (151/2745, 5.50%), which were prominently diverse at different stages. Additionally, the COVID-19 infodemic showed the characteristic of repeated fluctuations.ConclusionsOur study found that the COVID-19 infodemic on Chinese social media was characterized by gradual progress, videoization, and repeated fluctuations. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the COVID-19 infodemic is paralleled to the propagation of the COVID-19 epidemic. We have tracked the COVID-19 infodemic across Chinese social media, providing critical new insights into the characteristics of the infodemic and pointing out opportunities for preventing and controlling the COVID-19 infodemic.

Project description:BackgroundGiven the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic situation, accurate predictions could greatly help in the health resource management for future waves. However, as a new entity, COVID-19's disease dynamics seemed difficult to predict. External factors, such as internet search data, need to be included in the models to increase their accuracy. However, it remains unclear whether incorporating online search volumes into models leads to better predictive performances for long-term prediction.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to analyze whether search engine query data are important variables that should be included in the models predicting new daily COVID-19 cases and deaths in short- and long-term periods.MethodsWe used country-level case-related data, NAVER search volumes, and mobility data obtained from Google and Apple for the period of January 20, 2020, to July 31, 2021, in South Korea. Data were aggregated into four subsets: 3, 6, 12, and 18 months after the first case was reported. The first 80% of the data in all subsets were used as the training set, and the remaining data served as the test set. Generalized linear models (GLMs) with normal, Poisson, and negative binomial distribution were developed, along with linear regression (LR) models with lasso, adaptive lasso, and elastic net regularization. Root mean square error values were defined as a loss function and were used to assess the performance of the models. All analyses and visualizations were conducted in SAS Studio, which is part of the SAS OnDemand for Academics.ResultsGLMs with different types of distribution functions may have been beneficial in predicting new daily COVID-19 cases and deaths in the early stages of the outbreak. Over longer periods, as the distribution of cases and deaths became more normally distributed, LR models with regularization may have outperformed the GLMs. This study also found that models performed better when predicting new daily deaths compared to new daily cases. In addition, an evaluation of feature effects in the models showed that NAVER search volumes were useful variables in predicting new daily COVID-19 cases, particularly in the first 6 months of the outbreak. Searches related to logistical needs, particularly for "thermometer" and "mask strap," showed higher feature effects in that period. For longer prediction periods, NAVER search volumes were still found to constitute an important variable, although with a lower feature effect. This finding suggests that search term use should be considered to maintain the predictive performance of models.ConclusionsNAVER search volumes were important variables in short- and long-term prediction, with higher feature effects for predicting new daily COVID-19 cases in the first 6 months of the outbreak. Similar results were also found for death predictions.

Project description:BackgroundFactors such as anxiety, worry, and perceptions of insufficient knowledge about a topic motivate individuals to seek web-based health information to guide their health-related decision-making. These factors converged during the COVID-19 pandemic and were linked to COVID-19 vaccination decision-making. While research shows that web-based search relevant to COVID-19 was associated with subsequent vaccine uptake, less is known about COVID-19 vaccine intent search (which assesses vaccine availability, accessibility, and eligibility) as a signal of vaccine readiness.ObjectiveTo increase knowledge about vaccine intent search as a signal of vaccine readiness, we investigated the relationship between COVID-19 vaccine readiness and COVID-19 vaccine intent relative search volume on Google.MethodsWe compiled panel data from several data sources in all US counties between January 2021 and April 2023, a time during which those with primary COVID-19 vaccinations increased from <57,000 to >230 million adults. We estimated a random effects generalized least squares regression model with time-fixed effects to assess the relationship between county-level COVID-19 vaccine readiness and COVID-19 vaccine intent relative search volume. We controlled for health care capacity, per capita COVID-19 cases and vaccination doses administered, and sociodemographic indicators.ResultsThe county-level proportions of unvaccinated adults who reported that they would wait and see before getting a COVID-19 vaccine were positively associated with COVID-19 vaccine intent relative search volume (β=9.123; Z=3.59; P<.001). The county-level proportions of vaccine-enthusiast adults, adults who indicated they were either already vaccinated with a primary COVID-19 vaccine series or planned to complete the vaccine series soon, were negatively associated with COVID-19 vaccine intent relative search volume (β=-10.232; Z=-7.94; P<.001). However, vaccine intent search was higher in counties with high proportions of people who decided to wait and see and lower in counties with high proportions of vaccine enthusiasts.ConclusionsDuring this period of steep increase in COVID-19 vaccination, web-based search may have signaled differences in county-level COVID-19 vaccine readiness. More vaccine intent searches occurred in high wait-and-see counties, whereas fewer vaccine intent searches occurred in high vaccine-enthusiast counties. Considering previous research that identified a relationship between vaccine intent search and subsequent vaccine uptake, these findings suggest that vaccine intent search aligned with people's transition from the wait-and-see stage to the vaccine-enthusiast stage. The findings also suggest that web-based search trends may signal localized changes in information seeking and decision-making antecedent to vaccine uptake. Changes in web-based search trends illuminate opportunities for governments and other organizations to strategically allocate resources to increase vaccine uptake. Resource use is part of the larger public policy decisions that influence vaccine uptake, such as efforts to educate the public during evolving public health crises, including future pandemics.

Dataset Information

The COVID-19 Infodemic: Infodemiology Study Analyzing Stigmatizing Search Terms.

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The COVID-19 Infodemic: Infodemiology Study Analyzing Stigmatizing Search Terms.

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