Using data mining to track the information spreading on social media about the COVID-19 outbreak

Purpose COVID-19, a causative agent of the potentially fatal disease, has raised great global public health concern. Information spreading on the COVID-19 outbreak can strongly influence people behaviour in social media. This paper aims to question of information spreading on COVID-19 outbreak are addressed with a massive data analysis on Twitter from a multidimensional perspective. Design/methodology/approach The evolutionary trend of user interaction and the network structure is analysed by social network analysis. A differential assessment on the topics evolving is provided by the method of text clustering. Visualization is further used to show different characteristics of user interaction networks and public opinion in different periods. Findings Information spreading in social media emerges from different characteristics during various periods. User interaction demonstrates multidimensional cross relations. The results interpret how people express their thoughts and detect topics people are most discussing in social media. Research limitations/implications This study is mainly limited by the size of the data sets and the unicity of the social media. It is challenging to expand the data sets and choose multiple social media to cross-validate the findings of this study. Originality/value This paper aims to find the evolutionary trend of information spreading on the COVID-19 outbreak in social media, including user interaction and topical issues. The findings are of great importance to help government and related regulatory units to manage the dissemination of information on emergencies, in terms of early detection and prevention.