Centre de Recherche des Cordeliers, Université Paris Cité, Sorbonne Université, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM) UMR 1138, Paris, France.
Health Data- and Model- Driven Knowledge Acquisition (HeKA), Inria Paris, Paris, France.
JMIR Infodemiology. 2023 Sep 25;3:e41863. doi: 10.2196/41863.
During the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, social media has been extensively used to amplify the spread of information and to express personal health-related experiences regarding symptoms, including anosmia and ageusia, 2 symptoms that have been reported later than other symptoms.
Our objective is to investigate to what extent Twitter users reported anosmia and ageusia symptoms in their tweets and if they connected them to COVID-19, to evaluate whether these symptoms could have been identified as COVID-19 symptoms earlier using Twitter rather than the official notice.
We collected French tweets posted between January 1, 2020, and March 31, 2020, containing anosmia- or ageusia-related keywords. Symptoms were detected using fuzzy matching. The analysis consisted of 3 parts. First, we compared the coverage of anosmia and ageusia symptoms in Twitter and in traditional media to determine if the association between COVID-19 and anosmia or ageusia could have been identified earlier through Twitter. Second, we conducted a manual analysis of anosmia- and ageusia-related tweets to obtain quantitative and qualitative insights regarding their nature and to assess when the first associations between COVID-19 and these symptoms were established. We randomly annotated tweets from 2 periods: the early stage and the rapid spread stage of the epidemic. For each tweet, each symptom was annotated regarding 3 modalities: symptom (yes or no), associated with COVID-19 (yes, no, or unknown), and whether it was experienced by someone (yes, no, or unknown). Third, to evaluate if there was a global increase of tweets mentioning anosmia or ageusia in early 2020, corresponding to the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, we compared the tweets reporting experienced anosmia or ageusia between the first periods of 2019 and 2020.
In total, 832 (respectively 12,544) tweets containing anosmia (respectively ageusia) related keywords were extracted over the analysis period in 2020. The comparison to traditional media showed a strong correlation without any lag, which suggests an important reactivity of Twitter but no earlier detection on Twitter. The annotation of tweets from 2020 showed that tweets correlating anosmia or ageusia with COVID-19 could be found a few days before the official announcement. However, no association could be found during the first stage of the pandemic. Information about the temporality of symptoms and the psychological impact of these symptoms could be found in the tweets. The comparison between early 2020 and early 2019 showed no difference regarding the volumes of tweets.
Based on our analysis of French tweets, associations between COVID-19 and anosmia or ageusia by web users could have been found on Twitter just a few days before the official announcement but not during the early stage of the pandemic. Patients share qualitative information on Twitter regarding anosmia or ageusia symptoms that could be of interest for future analyses.
在前所未有的 COVID-19 大流行期间，社交媒体被广泛用于放大信息的传播，并表达个人与健康相关的症状体验，包括嗅觉丧失和味觉丧失，这两种症状的报告时间晚于其他症状。
我们的目的是调查在 Twitter 用户的推文中报告嗅觉丧失和味觉丧失症状的程度，以及他们是否将这些症状与 COVID-19 联系起来，以评估是否可以更早地通过 Twitter 而不是官方通知识别出这些症状是否为 COVID-19 症状。
我们收集了 2020 年 1 月 1 日至 3 月 31 日期间发布的包含嗅觉丧失或味觉丧失相关关键字的法国推文。使用模糊匹配检测症状。分析包括 3 个部分。首先，我们比较了 Twitter 和传统媒体中嗅觉丧失和味觉丧失症状的报道程度，以确定是否可以更早地通过 Twitter 识别出 COVID-19 与嗅觉丧失或味觉丧失之间的关联。其次，我们对嗅觉丧失和味觉丧失相关的推文进行了手动分析，以获取有关其性质的定量和定性见解，并评估何时首次建立 COVID-19 与这些症状之间的关联。我们对 2 个时期的推文进行了随机注释：疫情的早期阶段和快速传播阶段。对于每条推文，我们根据 3 种模态对每个症状进行了注释：症状（是或否）、与 COVID-19 相关（是、否或未知），以及症状是否被某人经历（是、否或未知）。第三，为了评估 2020 年初是否有大量提及嗅觉丧失或味觉丧失的推文，对应 COVID-19 疫情的开始，我们比较了 2019 年和 2020 年的前几个时期报告经历嗅觉丧失或味觉丧失的推文。
在整个分析期间，共提取了 832 条（分别为 12544 条）包含嗅觉丧失（分别为味觉丧失）相关关键字的推文。与传统媒体的比较显示出强烈的相关性且没有滞后，这表明 Twitter 反应迅速，但无法在 Twitter 上更早地发现。对 2020 年推文的注释显示，在官方宣布之前的几天就可以找到将嗅觉丧失或味觉丧失与 COVID-19 相关联的推文。然而，在疫情的早期阶段并未发现关联。可以在推文中找到有关症状时间性和这些症状心理影响的信息。2020 年初与 2019 年初的比较显示，关于推文数量没有差异。
基于我们对法国推文的分析，在官方宣布之前的几天内，网络用户就可以在 Twitter 上找到 COVID-19 与嗅觉丧失或味觉丧失之间的关联，但在疫情的早期阶段却无法找到关联。患者在 Twitter 上分享有关嗅觉丧失或味觉丧失症状的定性信息，这些信息可能对未来的分析有用。
