Revealing the linguistic and geographical disparities of public awareness to Covid-19 outbreak through social media

作     者：Binbin Lin Lei Zou Nick Duffield Ali Mostafavi Heng Cai Bing Zhou Jian Tao Mingzheng Yang Debayan Mandal Joynal Abedin 

作者机构：Department of GeographyTexas A&M UniversityCollege StationTXUSA Department of Electrical & Computer EngineeringTexas A&M UniversityCollege StationTXUSA Department of Civil & Environmental EngineeringTexas A&M UniversityCollege StationTXUSA Department of VisualizationTexas A&M UniversityCollege StationTXUSA 

出 版 物：《International Journal of Digital Earth》 (国际数字地球学报（英文）)

年 卷 期：2022年第15卷第1期

页      面：868-889页

核心收录：

学科分类：0402[教育学-心理学(可授教育学、理学学位）] 0303[法学-社会学] 0710[理学-生物学] 0502[文学-外国语言文学] 050201[文学-英语语言文学] 05[文学] 1002[医学-临床医学] 1001[医学-基础医学(可授医学、理学学位)] 0812[工学-计算机科学与技术（可授工学、理学学位）] 

基　　金：supported by Texas A&M Institute of Data Science(TAMIDS)under the Data Resource Development Program. 

主　　题：Social media Covid-19 public awareness geographical disparities linguistic disparities 

摘      要：The Covid-19 has presented an unprecedented challenge to public health worldwide.However,residents in different countries showed diverse levels of Covid-19 awareness during the outbreak and suffered from uneven health impacts.This study analyzed the global Twitter data from January 1st to June 30th,2020,to answer two research questions.What are the linguistic and geographical disparities of public awareness in the Covid-19 outbreak period reflected on social media?Does significant association exist between the changing Covid-19 awareness and the pandemic outbreak?We established a Twitter data mining framework calculating the Ratio index to quantify and track awareness.The lag correlations between awareness and health impacts were examined at global and country levels.Results show that users presenting the highest Covid-19 awareness were mainly those tweeting in the official languages of India and Bangladesh.Asian countries showed more disparities in awareness than European countries,and awareness in Eastern Europe was higher than in central Europe.Finally,the Ratio index had high correlations with global mortality rate,global case fatality ratio,and country-level mortality rate,with 21-31,35-42,and 13–18 leading days,respectively.This study yields timely insights into social media use in understanding human behaviors for public health research.