Large Arabic Twitter Dataset on COVID-19

TL;DR

This paper introduces the first large dataset of Arabic COVID-19 related tweets collected since January 2020, aiming to support research on societal impacts, misinformation, and behavioral changes during the pandemic.

Contribution

It provides a novel, extensive Arabic Twitter dataset on COVID-19, enabling diverse analyses of social and informational dynamics during the pandemic.

Findings

Dataset covers tweets from January 2020 onwards

Facilitates research on misinformation and behavioral change

Supports policy-making and societal impact studies

Abstract

The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19), emerged late December 2019 in China, is now rapidly spreading across the globe. At the time of writing this paper, the number of global confirmed cases has passed two millions and half with over 180,000 fatalities. Many countries have enforced strict social distancing policies to contain the spread of the virus. This have changed the daily life of tens of millions of people, and urged people to turn their discussions online, e.g., via online social media sites like Twitter. In this work, we describe the first Arabic tweets dataset on COVID-19 that we have been collecting since January 1st, 2020. The dataset would help researchers and policy makers in studying different societal issues related to the pandemic. Many other tasks related to behavioral change, information sharing, misinformation and rumors spreading can also be analyzed.