TY - CONF
T1 - Analyzing Mentions of Death in Covid-19 Tweets
AU - Adhikari, Divya Mani
AU - Imran, Muhammad
AU - Qazi, Umair W.
AU - Weber, Ingmar
PY - 2024/5/28
Y1 - 2024/5/28
N2 - Many researchers have analyzed the potential of using tweets for epidemiology in general and for nowcasting COVID-19 trends in specific. Here, we focus on a subset of tweets that mention a personal, COVID-related death. We show that focusing on this set improves the correlation with official death statistics in six countries, while also picking up on mortality trends specific to different age groups and socio-economic groups. Furthermore, qualitative analysis reveals how politicized many of the mentioned deaths are. To help others reproduce and build on our work, we release a dataset of annotated tweets for academic research.
AB - Many researchers have analyzed the potential of using tweets for epidemiology in general and for nowcasting COVID-19 trends in specific. Here, we focus on a subset of tweets that mention a personal, COVID-related death. We show that focusing on this set improves the correlation with official death statistics in six countries, while also picking up on mortality trends specific to different age groups and socio-economic groups. Furthermore, qualitative analysis reveals how politicized many of the mentioned deaths are. To help others reproduce and build on our work, we release a dataset of annotated tweets for academic research.
U2 - 10.1609/icwsm.v18i1.31449
DO - 10.1609/icwsm.v18i1.31449
M3 - Paper
ER -