Dataset Information

Media use pattern as an indicator of mental health in the COVID-19 pandemic: Dataset from India.

ABSTRACT: This article presents data on the media use pattern of respondents with different degrees of mental well-being and mental anxiety in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We collected data on demographic variables, patterns of media engagement, and levels of mental well-being and mental anxiety among the Indian adult population in the COVID-19 era. A web-based cross-sectional online survey was conducted to obtain data on two main aspects in the context of COVID-19: mental well-being and mental anxiety and engagement with the media, both television and other social media channels. Using respondent-driven convenient sampling method, 426 Indian adults (age ? 18 years) residing in the country responded to the survey. The survey was conducted 3 weeks after the nationwide lockdown was enforced between April 16 and 22, 2020. Besides providing the risk messages about the disease outbreak, the media channels provided sensational coverage of it that might have amplified the risk perception of the public; thus, media use pattern may be a strong indicator of the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of an individual. Therefore, this dataset could serve as a reference base for in-depth studies on the association between media amplification of a pandemic and the mental health status of the common public in the context of social disaster.

SUBMITTER: Mukherjee M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7811030 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Media use pattern as an indicator of mental health in the COVID-19 pandemic: Dataset from India.

Mukherjee Mrinal M Maity Chanchal C Chatterjee Somdutta S

Data in brief 20210109

This article presents data on the media use pattern of respondents with different degrees of mental well-being and mental anxiety in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We collected data on demographic variables, patterns of media engagement, and levels of mental well-being and mental anxiety among the Indian adult population in the COVID-19 era. A web-based cross-sectional online survey was conducted to obtain data on two main aspects in the context of COVID-19: mental well-being and mental a ...[more]

PMID: 33490336

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Project description:BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented mitigation efforts that disrupted the daily lives of millions. Beyond the general health repercussions of the pandemic itself, these measures also present a challenge to the world's mental health and health care systems. Considering that traditional survey methods are time-consuming and expensive, we need timely and proactive data sources to respond to the rapidly evolving effects of health policy on our population's mental health. Many people in the United States now use social media platforms such as Twitter to express the most minute details of their daily lives and social relations. This behavior is expected to increase during the COVID-19 pandemic, rendering social media data a rich field to understand personal well-being.ObjectiveThis study aims to answer three research questions: (1) What themes emerge from a corpus of US tweets about COVID-19? (2) To what extent did social media use increase during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic? and (3) Does sentiment change in response to the COVID-19 pandemic?MethodsWe analyzed 86,581,237 public domain English language US tweets collected from an open-access public repository in three steps. First, we characterized the evolution of hashtags over time using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling. Second, we increased the granularity of this analysis by downloading Twitter timelines of a large cohort of individuals (n=354,738) in 20 major US cities to assess changes in social media use. Finally, using this timeline data, we examined collective shifts in public mood in relation to evolving pandemic news cycles by analyzing the average daily sentiment of all timeline tweets with the Valence Aware Dictionary and Sentiment Reasoner (VADER) tool.ResultsLDA topics generated in the early months of the data set corresponded to major COVID-19-specific events. However, as state and municipal governments began issuing stay-at-home orders, latent themes shifted toward US-related lifestyle changes rather than global pandemic-related events. Social media volume also increased significantly, peaking during stay-at-home mandates. Finally, VADER sentiment analysis scores of user timelines were initially high and stable but decreased significantly, and continuously, by late March.ConclusionsOur findings underscore the negative effects of the pandemic on overall population sentiment. Increased use rates suggest that, for some, social media may be a coping mechanism to combat feelings of isolation related to long-term social distancing. However, in light of the documented negative effect of heavy social media use on mental health, social media may further exacerbate negative feelings in the long-term for many individuals. Thus, considering the overburdened US mental health care structure, these findings have important implications for ongoing mitigation efforts.

Dataset Information

Media use pattern as an indicator of mental health in the COVID-19 pandemic: Dataset from India.

Publications

Media use pattern as an indicator of mental health in the COVID-19 pandemic: Dataset from India.

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