Research on the Influence of Information Diffusion on the Transmission of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Lin Shanlang; Ma Chao; Lin Ruofei; Huang Junpei; Xu Ruohan; Yuan Aini

difficulty of epidemic prevention and control. In order to prevent the spread of the epidemic, the central government has taken unprecedented prevention and control measures, including setting up designated admission hospitals, expanding the supply of beds in the hospital, coordinating the dispatch of medical prevention and control materials, extending the Spring Festival holiday, implementing peak staggering return, measuring the temperature of vehicles and stations, disinfecting, ventilating, etc. The National Health Commission has also sent a number of supervision teams to hospitals and disease control agencies to conduct on-site supervision. Wuhan also announced the closure of the city on January 23, suspending urban public transport and strictly controlling the access of people inside and outside Wuhan. Subsequently, 31 provinces, regions and cities in the country successively launched the level 1 emergency response to public health emergencies, strictly controlled the transmission of the virus, and made every effort to prevent the further spread of the epidemic. At the early stage of the epidemic (December 31 to January 20), due to the lack of public reports in Wuhan's official media, the information of the epidemic was mainly disclosed by the media, so the epidemic was not paid attention by the public, which delayed the best time to expand the social impact, thus leading to the further spread of the epidemic. After January 20, with the outbreak of the epidemic and the release of information, COVID-19 epidemic information became the most concerned information of the public, and media reports entered a white-hot stage. The emergence of the novel coronavirus pneumonia has also caused widespread panic among the public. The official media, micro-blog, WeChat and other media have followed up the reports of real-time epidemic, new symptoms and prevention measures, and timely conveyed clear and positive information to the society and advised the public to protect themselves and to view the epidemic more objectively and objectively. Will the information diffusion help to eliminate rumors and guide the public to do a good job in protection and further inhibit the spread of the epidemic? Therefore, understanding the impact of information diffusion on epidemic transmission can help improve the prediction of epidemics and find preventive measures to slow down the spread of diseases. Therefore, this paper studies the problems above. The innovation points of the research are as follows: First, combing the epidemic theory, complex network analysis and the temporal and spatial background of the COVID-19 spread, we comb the mechanism of epidemic transmission; Second, we use econometric method to conduct a regress, and get the basic conclusion that information diffusion can effectively reduce the spread of COVID-19; third, using big data mining technology, Baidu search index, Baidu population migration, prevention and control data during the epidemic were mined through Baidu and government information websites at all levels. The remaining sections of the paper are as follows: the second section combs the research literature and puts forward the hypothesis; the third section is the research design, which describes the model construction, data source, main variable calculation, and statistical description; the fourth section is empirical analysis. The fifth section is a conclusion and discussion.