Related papers: COVID, BLM, and the polarization of US politicians…

The ongoing, fluid nature of the COVID-19 pandemic requires individuals to regularly seek information about best health practices, local community spreading, and public health guidelines. In the absence of a unified response to the pandemic…

The understanding of the public response to COVID-19 vaccines is the key success factor to control the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand the public response, there is a need to explore public opinion. Traditional surveys are expensive and…

The debate around vaccines has been going on for decades, but the COVID-19 pandemic showed how crucial it is to understand and mitigate anti-vaccine sentiments. While the pandemic may be over, it is still important to understand how the…

Digital contact tracing and analysis of social distancing from smartphone location data are two prime examples of non-therapeutic interventions used in many countries to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. While many understand…

The spread of misinformation, conspiracy, and questionable content and information manipulation by foreign adversaries on social media has surged along with the COVID-19 pandemic. Such malicious cyber-enabled actions may cause increasing…

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines have been an important topic in public discourse. The discussions around vaccines are polarized as some see them as an important measure to end the pandemic, and others are hesitant or find…

In this paper, we collect and study Twitter communications to understand the socio-economic impact of COVID-19 in the United States during the early days of the pandemic. Our analysis reveals that COVID-19 gripped the nation during this…

Social media is a rich source where we can learn about people's reactions to social issues. As COVID-19 has significantly impacted on people's lives, it is essential to capture how people react to public health interventions and understand…

Political expression through social media has already taken root as a form of political participation. Meanwhile, democracy seems to be facing an epidemic of incivility on social media platforms. With this background, online political…

Using language models, we analyze a sample of 67 million tweets and 30 million Reddit comments referencing a set of 215 political entities from 2010-2023 from partisan users, journalists, and politicians. Our analysis indicates outgroup…

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected people's lives in many ways. Social media data can reveal public perceptions and experience with respect to the pandemic, and also reveal factors that hamper or support efforts to curb global spread of the…

Past research has studied social determinants of attitudes toward foreign countries. Confounded by potential endogeneity biases due to unobserved factors or reverse causality, the causal impact of these factors on public opinion is usually…

Purpose: Public attitudes towards COVID-19 and social distancing are critical in reducing its spread. It is therefore important to understand public reactions and information dissemination in all major forms, including on social media. This…

Countries across the world have instituted unprecedented restrictions on freedom of movement, privacy and individual rights to control the spread of COVID-19. These measures tend to have been derived from communally orientated East Asian…

As the COVID-19 pandemic evolved, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) used Twitter to disseminate safety guidance and updates, reaching millions of users. This study analyzes two years of tweets from, to, and about the CDC…

Online social media (OSM) has emerged as a prominent platform for debate on a wide range of issues. Even celebrities and public figures often share their opinions on a variety of topics through OSM platforms. One such subject that has…

With people moving out of physical public spaces due to containment measures to tackle the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, online platforms become even more prominent tools to understand social discussion. Studying social media can…

Differences in political ideology are increasingly appearing as an impediment to successful bipartisan communication from local leadership. For example, recent empirical findings have shown that conservatives are less likely to adhere to…

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a decentralized social movement protesting violence against Black individuals and communities, with a focus on police brutality. The movement gained significant attention following the killings of Ahmaud Arbery,…

In the United States, from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to December 31, 2020, 341,199 deaths and more than 19,663,976 infections were recorded. Recent literature establishes that communities with poverty-related health problems, such…