How can social media analytics assist authorities in pandemic-related policy decisions? Insights from Australian states
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Health Information Science and Systems
RESEARCH
How can social media analytics assist authorities in pandemic‑related policy decisions? Insights from Australian states and territories Tan Yigitcanlar1* , Nayomi Kankanamge1 , Alexander Preston1, Palvinderjit Singh Gill1, Maqsood Rezayee2, Mahsan Ostadnia3, Bo Xia1 and Giuseppe Ioppolo4
Abstract Background and objectives: Due to COVID-19, various countries introduced lockdowns and limited citizen movements. These restrictions triggered an increased use of digital technologies and platforms by the public. This provides an opportunity for the authorities to capture public perceptions on COVID-19 from social media channels to make informed decisions. The use of social media analytics during pandemics for decision-making, however, is an understudied area of research. Thus, this study aims to generate insights into how social media analytics can assist authorities in pandemic-related policy decisions. Methods: This study involved a social media analysis approach—i.e., systematic geo-Twitter analysis—that contains descriptive, content, sentiment, and spatial analyses. Australian states and territories are selected as the case study context for the empirical investigation. This study collected 96,666 geotagged tweets (originated from Australia between 1 January and 4 May 2020), and analysed 35,969 of them after data cleaning. Results: The findings disclose that: (a) Social media analytics is an efficient approach to capture the attitudes and perceptions of the public during a pandemic; (b) Crowdsourced social media data can guide interventions and decisions of the authorities during a pandemic, and; (c) Effective use of government social media channels can help the public to follow the introduced measures/restrictions. Conclusion: The findings are invaluable for authorities to understand community perceptions and identify communities in needs and demands in a pandemic situation, where authorities are not in a position to conduct direct and lengthily public consultations. Keywords: COVID-19, Pandemic-related policy, Social media analytics, Crowdsources data, Urban informatics, Australia Introduction Human-beings have witnessed many pandemic events with catastrophic impacts on the health and socioeconomic wellbeing [1, 2]. Yellow fever outbreak, cholera, plague, tuberculosis, Spanish flu, Ebola, AIDS, influenza, *Correspondence: [email protected] 1 School of Built Environment, Queensland University of Technology, 2 George Street, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.
and West Nile disease are among some notable examples of pandemics [3]. Since the 80s, the globalisation process of the world has increased the threat of diseases as well as accelerated the spread of novel viruses [4]. The latest one, the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has been spreading globally since its outbreak and rapid transmission in late 2019 in Wuhan, China. World Health Organization
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