An ""Infodemic"": Leveraging High-Volume Twitter Data to Understand Public Sentiment for the COVID-19 Outbreak

Richard J. Medford; Sameh N. Saleh; Andrew Sumarsono; Trish M. Perl; Christoph U. Lehmann

With over 300 million monthly users, the micro-blogging platform Twitter is used increasingly to disseminate public health information and obtain real-time health data using crowdsourcing methods [1] . Researchers analyzed Twitter data to project the spread of influenza and other infectious outbreaks in real time [2] . In 2009, investigators measured the evolving interest in an Influenza A outbreak by analyzing tweet keywords and estimating real-time disease activity and disease prevention efforts [3] . During the Ebola virus (EV) outbreak in 2014, Twitter users publicized pertinent health information from media sources with peak Twitter activity within 24 hours following news events [4] . Tweet content analysis following the EV epidemic discovered that Ebola-related tweets revolved mainly around risk factors, prevention, disease trends, and compassion [5] . Similarly, the 2015 Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak, disease spread was found to be correlated with Twitter activity, promoting Twitter as a potential surveillance tool for emerging infectious diseases [6] . During the Zika virus epidemic, Twitter was used to study significant changes in travel behavior due to mounting public concerns [7] . Recognizing Twitter's potential to inform and educate the public, governmental agencies such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have adopted the use of Twitter and other social media. In the first 12 weeks of the Zika outbreak in late 2015, the WHO Twitter account was retweeted over 20,000 times, demonstrating its widespread impact on disseminating health information [8] .