ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has created complex problems that require organizations to collaborate within and across the sector line. Social media data can provide insights into how nonprofits interact for the pandemic response from both social network and geographical perspectives. This study innovatively investigated the connection and interaction patterns among 74 National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (NVOAD) nonprofits and three government agencies based on structural analyses and content analyses of their Twitter communications during the long-term global COVID-19 pandemic. The daily tweeting quantities of all nonprofits were generally consistent with the pandemic severity in the United States before July 2020 and remained stable afterward. Nonprofits’ tweets can reflect their purposes of sharing information, building communities, and taking actions for disaster response. Government agencies played leadership roles in providing COVID-19 guidelines and information. Human services, International and Foreign Affairs, and Public and Societal Benefit nonprofits, especially American Red Cross played central roles in the nonprofit communication network. Possible explanations include the following: (1) Geographically, connections and interactions among nonprofits are more likely to happen within the same city or in neighboring states. (2) Both mission homophily and heterophily contribute to connections and interactions among nonprofits, depending on their subsectors. The findings not only help the public better understand how nonprofits are collaboratively fighting the pandemic, but also provide guidance for nonprofits to plan for better interactions and communications in future disaster response. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Social Science Computer Review is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
ABSTRACT
Social media platforms allow users worldwide to create and share information, forging vast sensing networks that allow information on certain topics to be collected, stored, mined, and analyzed in a rapid manner. During the COVID-19 pandemic, extensive social media mining efforts have been undertaken to tackle COVID-19 challenges from various perspectives. This review summarizes the progress of social media data mining studies in the COVID-19 contexts and categorizes them into six major domains, including early warning and detection, human mobility monitoring, communication and information conveying, public attitudes and emotions, infodemic and misinformation, and hatred and violence. We further document essential features of publicly available COVID-19 related social media data archives that will benefit research communities in conducting replicable and reproducible studies. In addition, we discuss seven challenges in social media analytics associated with their potential impacts on derived COVID-19 findings, followed by our visions for the possible paths forward in regard to social media-based COVID-19 investigations. This review serves as a valuable reference that recaps social media mining efforts in COVID-19 related studies and provides future directions along which the information harnessed from social media can be used to address public health emergencies.