Related papers: COVID-19: The Information Warfare Paradigm Shift

On February 2, 2020, the World Health Organization declared a COVID-19 social media "infodemic", with special attention to misinformation -- frequently understood as false claims. To understand the infodemic's scope and scale, we analyzed…

At the time of this writing, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak has already put tremendous strain on many countries' citizens, resources and economies around the world. Social distancing measures, travel bans,…

The rapid outbreak of COVID-19 has caused humanity to come to a stand-still and brought with it a plethora of other problems. COVID-19 is the first pandemic in history when humanity is the most technologically advanced and relies heavily on…

Social media and messaging platforms have become a support system for those in fear of COVID-19 while, at the same time, becoming the root cause of spreading hate, inaccurate representations, and false realities. As technology has morphed…

Timely access to accurate information is crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prompted by key stakeholders' cautioning against an "infodemic", we study information sharing on Twitter from January through May 2020. We observe an overall…

Scientific discoveries and technologies played a significant role in the digital revolution that occurred over the last years. But what is their role in the turmoil brought by the current pandemic? The aim of this paper is to show how…

Social media is recognized as an important source for deriving insights into public opinion dynamics and social impacts due to the vast textual data generated daily and the 'unconstrained' behavior of people interacting on these platforms.…

While the COVID-19 pandemic continues its global devastation, numerous accompanying challenges emerge. One important challenge we face is to efficiently and effectively use recently gathered data and find computational tools to combat the…

Rumors and conspiracy theories thrive in environments of low confidence and low trust. Consequently, it is not surprising that ones related to the Covid-19 pandemic are proliferating given the lack of any authoritative scientific consensus…

Shortly after the first COVID-19 cases became apparent in December 2020, rumors spread on social media suggesting a connection between the virus and the 5G radiation emanating from the recently deployed telecommunications network. In the…

Controversial understandings of the coronavirus pandemic have turned data visualizations into a battleground. Defying public health officials, coronavirus skeptics on US social media spent much of 2020 creating data visualizations showing…

This study examines how public discourse around COVID-19 unfolded on Twitter through the lens of crisis communication and digital publics. Analyzing over 275,000 tweets involving the CDC, we identify 16 distinct discourse clusters shaped by…

The abundance of information on social media has reshaped public discussions, shifting attention to the mechanisms that drive online discourse. This study analyzes large-scale Twitter (now X) data from three global debates--Climate Change,…

The rapid advancement of technology in online communication via social media platforms has led to a prolific rise in the spread of misinformation and fake news. Fake news is especially rampant in the current COVID-19 pandemic, leading to…

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, news outlets and social media have become central tools for disseminating and consuming information. Because of their ease of access, users seek COVID-19-related information from online social media…

Misinformation/disinformation about COVID-19 has been rampant on social media around the world. In this study, we investigate COVID-19 misinformation/ disinformation on social media in multiple languages - Farsi (Persian), Chinese, and…

COVID-19 is having a dramatic impact on research and researchers. The pandemic has underlined the severity of known challenges in research and surfaced new ones, but also accelerated the adoption of innovations and manifested new…

While social media plays a vital role in communication nowadays, misinformation and trolls can easily take over the conversation and steer public opinion on these platforms. We saw the effect of misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic…

The breakdown of trusted sources of information is probably one of the most serious problems today, since in the absence of a common ground, it will be impossible to address the problems that trouble our contemporary world. The Covid-19…

Epidemics and pandemics have ravaged human life since time. To combat these, novel ideas have always been created and deployed by humanity, with varying degrees of success. At this very moment, the COVID-19 pandemic is the singular global…