The pandemic of social media panic travels faster than the COVID-19 outbreak

By A. Depoux, S. Martin, E. Karafillakis, R. Preet, Annelies Wilder-Smith, H. Larson. Journal of Travel Medicine, 2020

915 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We need to rapidly detect and respond to public rumours, perceptions, attitudes and behaviours around COVID-19 and control measures. The creation of an interactive platform and dashboard to provide real-time alerts of rumours and concerns about coronavirus spreading globally would enable public health officials and relevant stakeholders to respond rapidly with a proactive and engaging narrative that can mitigate misinformation.

Subfields: Health, Literature and Literary Theory, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bcc989498a5b634d719a273a333122b8077ee84c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Health

1. Melisa Basol
2. S. van der Linden
3. J. Roozenbeek

In Literature and Literary Theory

1. S. van der Linden
2. Melisa Basol
3. John Cook
4. J. Compton
5. J. Roozenbeek

In Sociology and Political Science

1. S. van der Linden
2. Melisa Basol
3. J. Compton
4. John Cook
5. D. González-Padilla
6. L. Tortolero-Blanco
7. J. Roozenbeek
8. J. Reser

Citations in the corpus

• Psychosocial impact of COVID-19 (2020, neutral): “As a consequence, rapidly expanding mass hysteria and panic regarding COVID-19 may beget enduring psychological problems in public from all the socioeconomic domains, which could potentially be even more detrimental in the long run than the virus itself [6].”
• The Impact of Social Media on Panic During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Iraqi Kurdistan: Online Questionnaire Study (2020, background): “” Depoux and others [37-40] determined that social media has played three main roles in the COVID-19 outbreak in most countries.”
• The Twitter pandemic: The critical role of Twitter in the dissemination of medical information and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020, background): “Additionally, the spread of information is not limited by distance, such that the pandemic of fear can and has spread before the actual C-19 pandemic.(3) This has an effect on our patients’ mental health, putting their physical and mental well-being at risk.”
• Social media influence in the COVID-19 Pandemic (2020, background): “On the other hand, at the same speed information travels, disinformation does, it is for this same reason that some authors have suggested creating working groups aimed at fighting myths and disinformation in social media platforms (20).”
• Inoculation theory in the post‐truth era: Extant findings and new frontiers for contested science, misinformation, and conspiracy theories (2021, background): “Within the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic, scholars have pointed out striking parallels between virology and the virality of the misinformation around it (Depoux et al., 2020).”