An exploratory study of COVID-19 information on twitter in the greater region

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 led to a burst of information in major online social networks (OSNs). Facing this constantly changing situation, OSNs have become an essential platform for people expressing opinions and seeking up-to-the-minute information. Thus, discussions on OSNs may become a reflection of reality. This paper aims to figure out how Twitter users in the Greater Region (GR) and related countries react differently over time through conducting a data-driven exploratory study of COVID-19 information using machine learning and representation learning methods. We find that tweet volume and COVID-19 cases in GR and related countries are correlated, but this correlation only exists in a particular period of the pandemic. Moreover, we plot the changing of topics in each country and region from 22 January 2020 to 5 June 2020, figuring out the main differences between GR and related countries.