COVID-19 infodemic on Chinese social media: A 4P framework, selective review and research directions

ABSTRACT

During the outbreak of the COVID-19 (2019 coronavirus disease), misinformation related to the virus spread rapidly online and have led to serious difficulties in controlling the disease. The term infodemic is coined to outline the bad effect from the extensive dissemination of misinformation during the outbreak. With regards to this phenomenon, the World Health Organization emphasized the need to fight against infodemic and asked all countries not only to make efforts in slowing down the spread of the COVID-19 but also in countering the risk caused by infodemic. Due to its negative impact, this paper analyzes infodemic on Chinese social media at the initial stage of the COVID-19 outbreak and presents a 4P framework standing for the four features of Chinese infodemic Prevention Attention, Problem Orientation, Patterns Interaction and Points Globalization. Furthermore, a selective review of existing datasets in the neural networks domain is synthesized based on the 4P framework. Finally, research directions, including recommendations, about constructing a large-scale dataset for Chinese infodemic automatic detection are proposed.