Abstract
This article aims to quantify and qualify the information circulating in social media groups about COVID-19, the subjects covered in posts, as well as the possible relations with other subjects, events or social events, in order to generate a representative panorama of perception and social reaction to the coronavirus pandemic. For this, statistical techniques, data mining and machine learning are used to the characterization, pattern detection, and grouping of textual data. The experiments are carried out on a dataset of textual data extracted from a Brazilian public group about COVID-19 (SARS-cov-2) of the social network Facebook. Statistical analyzes are crossed with data on the advance of the number of infected, and with specific political-social events, revealing variations and influences in terms of participation and engagement in the analyzed group. In addition, through the results obtained by the clustering method used, two main groups of posts are detected, the first presenting a content pattern geared to governmental issues, and the second to personal issues. The results achieved still allow a reflection on the possible social impacts of the creation or absence of public policies to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Highlights
1 Introduction In December 2019, the city of Wuhan, China, witnessed the emergence of one of the most alarming pandemics recorded in the Contemporary Age, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-cov-2), known as COVID19
Identified as a zoonotic coronavirus, similar to other known viruses, such as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-cov) and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-cov) (LIU et al, 2020), COVID-19 overtook in early April 2020, the number of one million infected around the world, with more than fifty thousand deaths registered, according to data released by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2020a)
With the process of extracting data from the group selected on the social network Facebook, 7523 publications were obtained
Summary
In December 2019, the city of Wuhan, China, witnessed the emergence of one of the most alarming pandemics recorded in the Contemporary Age, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-cov-2), known as COVID19. Identified as a zoonotic coronavirus, similar to other known viruses, such as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-cov) and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-cov) (LIU et al, 2020), COVID-19 overtook in early April 2020, the number of one million infected around the world, with more than fifty thousand deaths registered, according to data released by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2020a). In Brazil, the first case of contamination by coronavirus was confirmed on February 26, 2020 (MELO et al, 2020), and on March 31, 2020, 5,717 infections and 201 deaths were recorded (WHO, 2020a). The number of infected people increases exponentially from the moment the first infections occur
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