Clusters of science and health related Twitter users become more isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract COVID-19 represents the most severe global crisis to date whose public conversation can be studied in real time. To do so, we use a data set of over 350 million tweets and retweets posted by over 26 million English speaking Twitter users from January 13 to June 7, 2020. We characterize the...

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Autores principales:	Francesco Durazzi, Martin Müller, Marcel Salathé, Daniel Remondini
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Nature Portfolio 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/1889b42940354904bfa623015d6bcabe
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:1889b42940354904bfa623015d6bcabe2021-12-02T17:13:17ZClusters of science and health related Twitter users become more isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic10.1038/s41598-021-99301-02045-2322https://doaj.org/article/1889b42940354904bfa623015d6bcabe2021-10-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-99301-0https://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract COVID-19 represents the most severe global crisis to date whose public conversation can be studied in real time. To do so, we use a data set of over 350 million tweets and retweets posted by over 26 million English speaking Twitter users from January 13 to June 7, 2020. We characterize the retweet network to identify spontaneous clustering of users and the evolution of their interaction over time in relation to the pandemic’s emergence. We identify several stable clusters (super-communities), and are able to link them to international groups mainly involved in science and health topics, national elites, and political actors. The science- and health-related super-community received disproportionate attention early on during the pandemic, and was leading the discussion at the time. However, as the pandemic unfolded, the attention shifted towards both national elites and political actors, paralleled by the introduction of country-specific containment measures and the growing politicization of the debate. Scientific super-community remained present in the discussion, but experienced less reach and became more isolated within the network. Overall, the emerging network communities are characterized by an increased self-amplification and polarization. This makes it generally harder for information from international health organizations or scientific authorities to directly reach a broad audience through Twitter for prolonged time. These results may have implications for information dissemination along the unfolding of long-term events like epidemic diseases on a world-wide scale.Francesco DurazziMartin MüllerMarcel SalathéDaniel RemondiniNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 11, Iss 1, Pp 1-11 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Francesco Durazzi Martin Müller Marcel Salathé Daniel Remondini Clusters of science and health related Twitter users become more isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic
description	Abstract COVID-19 represents the most severe global crisis to date whose public conversation can be studied in real time. To do so, we use a data set of over 350 million tweets and retweets posted by over 26 million English speaking Twitter users from January 13 to June 7, 2020. We characterize the retweet network to identify spontaneous clustering of users and the evolution of their interaction over time in relation to the pandemic’s emergence. We identify several stable clusters (super-communities), and are able to link them to international groups mainly involved in science and health topics, national elites, and political actors. The science- and health-related super-community received disproportionate attention early on during the pandemic, and was leading the discussion at the time. However, as the pandemic unfolded, the attention shifted towards both national elites and political actors, paralleled by the introduction of country-specific containment measures and the growing politicization of the debate. Scientific super-community remained present in the discussion, but experienced less reach and became more isolated within the network. Overall, the emerging network communities are characterized by an increased self-amplification and polarization. This makes it generally harder for information from international health organizations or scientific authorities to directly reach a broad audience through Twitter for prolonged time. These results may have implications for information dissemination along the unfolding of long-term events like epidemic diseases on a world-wide scale.
format	article
author	Francesco Durazzi Martin Müller Marcel Salathé Daniel Remondini
author_facet	Francesco Durazzi Martin Müller Marcel Salathé Daniel Remondini
author_sort	Francesco Durazzi
title	Clusters of science and health related Twitter users become more isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_short	Clusters of science and health related Twitter users become more isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_full	Clusters of science and health related Twitter users become more isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_fullStr	Clusters of science and health related Twitter users become more isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_full_unstemmed	Clusters of science and health related Twitter users become more isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic
title_sort	clusters of science and health related twitter users become more isolated during the covid-19 pandemic
publisher	Nature Portfolio
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/1889b42940354904bfa623015d6bcabe
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Clusters of science and health related Twitter users become more isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic

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