Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA.
Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA.
J Biomed Inform. 2020 Nov;111:103601. doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2020.103601. Epub 2020 Oct 14.
Using Twitter, we aim to (1) define and quantify the prevalence and evolution of facets of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic in the US in a spatiotemporal context and (2) examine amplified tweets among social distancing facets.
We analyzed English and US-based tweets containing "coronavirus" between January 23-March 24, 2020 using the Twitter API. Tweets containing keywords were grouped into six social distancing facets: implementation, purpose, social disruption, adaptation, positive emotions, and negative emotions.
A total of 259,529 unique tweets were included in the analyses. Social distancing tweets became more prevalent from late January to March but were not geographically uniform. Early facets of social distancing appeared in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle: the first cities impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak. Tweets related to the "implementation" and "negative emotions" facets largely dominated in combination with topics of "social disruption" and "adaptation", albeit to lesser degree. Social disruptiveness tweets were most retweeted, and implementation tweets were most favorited.
Social distancing can be defined by facets that respond to and represent certain events in a pandemic, including travel restrictions and rising case counts. For example, Miami had a low volume of social distancing tweets but grew in March corresponding with the rise of COVID-19 cases.
The evolution of social distancing facets on Twitter reflects actual events and may signal potential disease hotspots. Our facets can also be used to understand public discourse on social distancing which may inform future public health measures.
利用 Twitter，我们旨在（1）在时空背景下定义和量化美国 COVID-19 大流行期间社会隔离各个方面的流行程度和演变，（2）研究社会隔离各个方面的放大推文。
我们使用 Twitter API 分析了 2020 年 1 月 23 日至 3 月 24 日期间包含“冠状病毒”的英文和美国推文。包含关键字的推文被分为六个社会隔离方面：实施、目的、社会干扰、适应、积极情绪和消极情绪。
共有 259529 条独特的推文被纳入分析。从 1 月底到 3 月，社会隔离推文的流行程度有所增加，但在地理上并不均匀。社会隔离的早期方面出现在洛杉矶、旧金山和西雅图：这些城市是 COVID-19 爆发的第一批受影响城市。与“实施”和“消极情绪”方面相关的推文主要与“社会干扰”和“适应”的主题结合在一起，尽管程度较小。社会干扰性推文的转发量最大，而实施性推文的点赞量最大。
社会隔离可以通过响应和代表大流行中某些事件的方面来定义，包括旅行限制和病例数上升。例如，迈阿密的社会隔离推文数量较少，但随着 COVID-19 病例的增加，3 月份的推文数量有所增加。
Twitter 上社会隔离方面的演变反映了实际事件，并可能预示着潜在的疾病热点。我们的方面也可用于了解公众对社会隔离的看法，这可能为未来的公共卫生措施提供信息。
