IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jftint/v13y2021i7p184-d597369.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Assessing the Predictive Power of Online Social Media to Analyze COVID-19 Outbreaks in the 50 U.S. States

Author

Listed:
  • Jiachen Sun

    (MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, Cambridge, MA 02140, USA
    School of Electronics and Information Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China)

  • Peter A. Gloor

    (MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, Cambridge, MA 02140, USA)

Abstract

As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to rage worldwide, the United States has become the most affected country, with more than 34.1 million total confirmed cases up to 1 June 2021. In this work, we investigate correlations between online social media and Internet search for the COVID-19 pandemic among 50 U.S. states. By collecting the state-level daily trends through both Twitter and Google Trends, we observe a high but state-different lag correlation with the number of daily confirmed cases. We further find that the accuracy measured by the correlation coefficient is positively correlated to a state’s demographic, air traffic volume and GDP development. Most importantly, we show that a state’s early infection rate is negatively correlated with the lag to the previous peak in Internet searches and tweeting about COVID-19, indicating that earlier collective awareness on Twitter/Google correlates with a lower infection rate. Lastly, we demonstrate that correlations between online social media and search trends are sensitive to time, mainly due to the attention shifting of the public.

Suggested Citation

  • Jiachen Sun & Peter A. Gloor, 2021. "Assessing the Predictive Power of Online Social Media to Analyze COVID-19 Outbreaks in the 50 U.S. States," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 13(7), pages 1-13, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jftint:v:13:y:2021:i:7:p:184-:d:597369
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/13/7/184/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/13/7/184/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeremy Ginsberg & Matthew H. Mohebbi & Rajan S. Patel & Lynnette Brammer & Mark S. Smolinski & Larry Brilliant, 2009. "Detecting influenza epidemics using search engine query data," Nature, Nature, vol. 457(7232), pages 1012-1014, February.
    2. Declan Butler, 2013. "When Google got flu wrong," Nature, Nature, vol. 494(7436), pages 155-156, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Khatri, Vijay, 2016. "Managerial work in the realm of the digital universe: The role of the data triad," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 59(6), pages 673-688.
    2. Baki Cakici & Pedro Sanches, 2014. "Detecting the Visible: The Discursive Construction of Health Threats in a Syndromic Surveillance System Design," Societies, MDPI, vol. 4(3), pages 1-15, July.
    3. Zeynep Ertem & Dorrie Raymond & Lauren Ancel Meyers, 2018. "Optimal multi-source forecasting of seasonal influenza," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(9), pages 1-16, September.
    4. Ibrahim Musa & Hyun Woo Park & Lkhagvadorj Munkhdalai & Keun Ho Ryu, 2018. "Global Research on Syndromic Surveillance from 1993 to 2017: Bibliometric Analysis and Visualization," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-20, September.
    5. Rivera, Roberto, 2016. "A dynamic linear model to forecast hotel registrations in Puerto Rico using Google Trends data," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 12-20.
    6. Daniel E. O'Leary & Veda C. Storey, 2020. "A Google–Wikipedia–Twitter Model as a Leading Indicator of the Numbers of Coronavirus Deaths," Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(3), pages 151-158, July.
    7. Jun, Seung-Pyo & Park, Do-Hyung, 2016. "Consumer information search behavior and purchasing decisions: Empirical evidence from Korea," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 97-111.
    8. Jun, Seung-Pyo & Yoo, Hyoung Sun & Lee, Jae-Seong, 2021. "The impact of the pandemic declaration on public awareness and behavior: Focusing on COVID-19 google searches," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    9. Katsikopoulos, Konstantinos V. & Şimşek, Özgür & Buckmann, Marcus & Gigerenzer, Gerd, 2022. "Transparent modeling of influenza incidence: Big data or a single data point from psychological theory?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 613-619.
    10. Wengao Lu & Jingxin Li & Jinsong Li & Danni Ai & Hong Song & Zhaojun Duan & Jian Yang, 2021. "Short-Term Impacts of Meteorology, Air Pollution, and Internet Search Data on Viral Diarrhea Infection among Children in Jilin Province, China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(21), pages 1-15, November.
    11. Pablo Pedraza & Ian Vollbracht, 2023. "General theory of data, artificial intelligence and governance," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-16, December.
    12. David H Chae & Sean Clouston & Mark L Hatzenbuehler & Michael R Kramer & Hannah L F Cooper & Sacoby M Wilson & Seth I Stephens-Davidowitz & Robert S Gold & Bruce G Link, 2015. "Association between an Internet-Based Measure of Area Racism and Black Mortality," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-12, April.
    13. Xiaoli Wang & Shuangsheng Wu & C Raina MacIntyre & Hongbin Zhang & Weixian Shi & Xiaomin Peng & Wei Duan & Peng Yang & Yi Zhang & Quanyi Wang, 2015. "Using an Adjusted Serfling Regression Model to Improve the Early Warning at the Arrival of Peak Timing of Influenza in Beijing," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(3), pages 1-14, March.
    14. Ishani Chaudhuri & Parthajit Kayal, 2022. "Predicting Power of Ticker Search Volume in Indian Stock Market," Working Papers 2022-214, Madras School of Economics,Chennai,India.
    15. Yang, Xin & Pan, Bing & Evans, James A. & Lv, Benfu, 2015. "Forecasting Chinese tourist volume with search engine data," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 386-397.
    16. Kuchler, Theresa & Russel, Dominic & Stroebel, Johannes, 2022. "JUE Insight: The geographic spread of COVID-19 correlates with the structure of social networks as measured by Facebook," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    17. Markowitz, Sara & Nesson, Erik & Robinson, Joshua J., 2019. "The effects of employment on influenza rates," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 286-295.
    18. Bentzen, Jeanet Sinding, 2021. "In crisis, we pray: Religiosity and the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 541-583.
    19. Jesse T. Richman & Ryan J. Roberts, 2023. "Assessing Spurious Correlations in Big Search Data," Forecasting, MDPI, vol. 5(1), pages 1-12, February.
    20. Linus Schiöler & Marianne Fris�n, 2012. "Multivariate outbreak detection," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(2), pages 223-242, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jftint:v:13:y:2021:i:7:p:184-:d:597369. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.