Defining facets of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic: Twitter analysis.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

Using Twitter, we aim to (1) define and quantify the prevalence and evolution of facets of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic in the US in a spatiotemporal context and (2) examine amplified tweets among social distancing facets.

Materials and methods

We analyzed English and US-based tweets containing "coronavirus" between January 23-March 24, 2020 using the Twitter API. Tweets containing keywords were grouped into six social distancing facets: implementation, purpose, social disruption, adaptation, positive emotions, and negative emotions.

Results

A total of 259,529 unique tweets were included in the analyses. Social distancing tweets became more prevalent from late January to March but were not geographically uniform. Early facets of social dis

SUBMITTER: Kwon J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7553881 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature