Emergence of knowledge communities and information centralization during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Soc Sci Med
; 285: 114215, 2021 09.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1331234
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
As COVID-19 spreads worldwide, an infodemic - i.e., an over-abundance of information, reliable or not - spreads across the physical and the digital worlds, triggering behavioral responses which cause public health concern.METHODS:
We study 200 million interactions captured from Twitter during the early stage of the pandemic, from January to April 2020, to understand its socio-informational structure on a global scale.FINDINGS:
The COVID-19 global communication network is characterized by knowledge groups, hierarchically organized in sub-groups with well-defined geo-political and ideological characteristics. Communication is mostly segregated within groups and driven by a small number ofsubjects:
0.1% of users account for up to 45% and 10% of activities and news shared, respectively, centralizing the information flow.INTERPRETATION:
Contradicting the idea that digital social media favor active participation and co-creation of online content, our results imply that public health policy strategies to counter the effects of the infodemic must not only focus on information content, but also on the social articulation of its diffusion mechanisms, as a given community tends to be relatively impermeable to news generated by non-aligned sources.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Social Media
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Randomized controlled trials
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Soc Sci Med
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
J.socscimed.2021.114215
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