Abstract
BackgroudEffective communication of accurate information through social media constitutes an important component of public health interventions in modern time, when traditional public health approaches such as contact tracing, quarantine and isolation are among the few options for the containing the disease spread in the population. The success of control of COVID-19 outbreak started from Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei Province of China relies heavily on the resilience of residents to follow public health interventions which induce substantial interruption of social-economic activities, and evidence shows that opinion leaders have been playing significant roles in the propagation of epidemic information and public health policy and implementations.MethodsWe design a mathematical model to quantify the roles of information superspreaders in single specific information which outbreaks rapidly and usually has a short duration period, and to examine the information propagation dynamics in the Chinese Sina-microblog. Our opinion-leader susceptible-forwarding-immune (OL-SFI) model is formulated to track the temporal evolution of forwarding quantities generated by opinion leaders and normal users.ResultsData fitting from the real data of COVID-19 obtained from Chinese Sina-microblog can identify the different contact rates and forwarding probabilities (and hence calculate the basic information forwarding reproduction number of superspreaders), and can be used to evaluate the roles of opinion leaders in different stages of the information propagation and the outbreak unfolding.ConclusionsThe parameterized model can be used to nearcast the information propagation trend, and the model-based sensitivity analysis can help to explore important factors for the roles of opinion leaders.
Highlights
In the absence of effective treatment and vaccine, the control of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, in China was achieved by an unprecedented massive non-medical public health interventions involving gradually improved rapid diagnostics, contact tracing followed by quarantine and isolation
These interventions induced significant interruption of social-economic activities, and their successful implementation by a large population clearly indicated the effective propagation of public health information through social media
Considering there exists susceptible users, opinion leaders and normal forwarding users in social media and these kinds of users may impact public opinion, here we propose an opinion-leader susceptible-forwardingimmune (OL-SFI) dynamics model based on the forwarding quantity generated by opinion leaders and normal users in different stages of a hot topic dissemination through online social media during the COVID-19 outbreak in China
Summary
In the absence of effective treatment and vaccine, the control of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, in China was achieved by an unprecedented massive non-medical public health interventions involving gradually improved rapid diagnostics, contact tracing followed by quarantine and isolation These interventions induced significant interruption of social-economic activities, and their successful implementation by a large population clearly indicated the effective propagation of public health information through social media. On January 20th of 2020, Nanshan Zhong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, personally confirmed the occurrence of the human-to-human transmission of the COVID-19 [1] His confirmation, forwarded by opinion leaders and followed by their fans, changed the perception of the public about the risk of this emerging infectious disease in a very short period time right before the traditional Chinese New Year. It is important to examine how opinion leaders have influenced public opinion and information propagation in social media in order to design effective communication strategies for the on-going battle against COVID-19 and future pandemic outbreaks
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