Examining Rural and Urban Sentiment Difference in COVID-19-Related Topics on Twitter: Word Embedding-Based Retrospective Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

By the end of 2022, more than 100 million people were infected with COVID-19 in the United States, and the cumulative death rate in rural areas (383.5/100,000) was much higher than in urban areas (280.1/100,000). As the pandemic spread, people used social media platforms to express their opinions and concerns about COVID-19-related topics.

Objective

This study aimed to (1) identify the primary COVID-19-related topics in the contiguous United States communicated over Twitter and (2) compare the sentiments urban and rural users expressed about these topics.

Methods

We collected tweets containing geolocation data from May 2020 to January 2022 in the contiguous United States. We relied on the tweets' geolocations to determine if their authors were in an urban o

SUBMITTER: Liu Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9937112 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature