Social status and novelty drove the spread of online information during the early stages of COVID-19.

ABSTRACT: Access to online information has been crucial throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed more than eight million randomly selected Twitter posts from the first wave of the pandemic to study the role of the author's social status (Health Expert or Influencer) and the informational novelty of the tweet in the diffusion of several key types of information. Our results show that health-related information and political discourse propagated faster than personal narratives, economy-related or travel-related news. Content novelty further accelerated the spread of these discussion themes. People trusted health experts on health-related knowledge, especially when it was novel, while influencers were more effective at propagating political discourse. Finally, we observed a U-shaped relationship b

SUBMITTER: Photiou A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8505518 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature