How do social media and individual behaviors affect epidemic transmission and control?

ABSTRACT: In the outbreak of infectious diseases such as COVID-19, social media channels are important tools for the public to obtain information and form their opinions on infection risk, which can affect their disease prevention behaviors and the consequent disease transmission processes. However, there has been a lack of theoretical investigation into how social media and human behaviors jointly affect the spread of infectious diseases. In this study, we develop an agent-based modeling framework that couples (1) a general opinion dynamics model that describes how individuals form their opinions on epidemic risk with various information sources, (2) a behavioral adoption model that simulates the adoption of disease prevention behaviors, and (3) an epidemiological SEIR model that simulates the spre

SUBMITTER: Du E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7834887 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature