A study released Thursday by USC researchers claimed Twitter helped predict where future COVID-19 outbreaks are likely to occur. In addition, the most recent research has developed a tool that could aid health officials in planning ahead of time.
"We show that anti-science views are aligned with political ideology, specifically conservatism," Kristina Lerman, the study's lead author and a professor at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, said per Times of San Diego. "While that's not necessarily brand new, we discovered this entirely from social media data that gives detailed clues about where COVID-19 is likely to spread so we can take preventive measures."
According to the researchers, they discovered that "anti-science" views were high between January and April 2020 in various Mountain West and Southern states that were later affected by catastrophic COVID-19 surges.
Lerman said the study's findings could help politicians and public health authorities adapt communications to lessen scientific skepticism and prepare for a potential disease epidemic if an anti-science attitude grows in one section of the country.
The study, titled Political Partisanship and Anti-Science Attitudes in Online Discussions About COVID-19, is published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
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Examining Anti-Science Views Can Assist in Tailoring Comms Strategies, Bracing for Outbreaks
Researchers looked at public health attitudes based on 27 million tweets from 2.4 million Twitter users in the United States between Jan. 21 and May 1, 2020. They parsed the data by demographics and geography in a way that allowed for near real-time monitoring of partisan and "pseudo-science" attitudes that could be refined in great detail with the help of a computer program.
According to the University of Southern California, the researchers examined opinions through time and across the location to observe how they changed. Furthermore, the researchers went into specific topics that were relevant to each group.
Anti-science conservatives were interested in political issues such as reelection campaigns and QAnon conspiracies. In contrast, science conservatives were interested in environmental issues. Meanwhile, pro-science conservatives concentrated on global breakouts of the virus and on preventive efforts to "flatten the curve."
Researchers were able to track sentiments through time and across geographical boundaries to examine how they changed. For example, they discovered to their astonishment that polarization on the subject of science decreased over time.
Perhaps most encouraging, they revealed that "the number of pro-science, politically moderate users dwarfs other ideological groups, especially anti-science groups," even in a highly polarized population. According to their findings, the majority of people are willing to accept scientific data and trust scientists.
Lerman, a computer scientist and expert in mining social media for indications about human behavior at USC's Information Sciences Institute, said that the study gave researchers the capacity to analyze public dialogue around coronavirus and correlate it to epidemiological consequences.
The researcher said people could utilize social media data for scientific purposes. These include creating spatial and temporal maps of public opinion along ideological lines, such as pro-and anti-science lines. "We can also see what topics are important to these segments of society, and we can plan proactively to prevent disease outbreaks from happening," Lerman said per NBC Los Angeles.
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