Journal of medical Internet research
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J. Med. Internet Res. · Jun 2020
Online Information Exchange and Anxiety Spread in the Early Stage of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Outbreak in South Korea: Structural Topic Model and Network Analysis.
In case of a population-wide infectious disease outbreak, such as the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), people's online activities could significantly affect public concerns and health behaviors due to difficulty in accessing credible information from reliable sources, which in turn causes people to seek necessary information on the web. Therefore, measuring and analyzing online health communication and public sentiment is essential for establishing effective and efficient disease control policies, especially in the early stage of an outbreak. ⋯ Search activity for online information regarding the COVID-19 outbreak has been active. Many of the online questions were related to people's anxieties and worries. A considerable portion of corresponding answers had false information or were advertisements. The study results could contribute reference information to various countries that need to monitor public anxiety and provide appropriate information in the early stage of an infectious disease outbreak, including COVID-19. Our research also contributes to developing methods for measuring public opinion and sentiment in an epidemic situation based on natural language data on the internet.