A First Instagram Dataset on COVID-19

TL;DR

This paper introduces a multilingual COVID-19 Instagram dataset collected since March 2020, aimed at aiding research on social media dynamics and misinformation during the pandemic.

Contribution

It provides the first publicly available Instagram dataset on COVID-19, enabling analysis of social media behavior and misinformation spread related to the pandemic.

Findings

Dataset collected since March 30, 2020

Available on Github for research use

Supports studies on misinformation propagation

Abstract

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak is drastically shaping and reshaping many aspects of our life, with a huge impact on our social life. In this era of lockdown policies in most of the major cities around the world, we see a huge increase in people and professional engagement in social media. Social media is playing an important role in news propagation as well as keeping people in contact. At the same time, this source is both a blessing and a curse as the coronavirus infodemic has become a major concern, and is already a topic that needs special attention and further research. In this paper, we provide a multilingual coronavirus (COVID-19) Instagram dataset that we have been continuously collected since March 30, 2020. We are making our dataset available to the research community at Github. We believe that this contribution will help the community to better understand the dynamics behind this phenomenon in Instagram, as one of the major social media. This dataset could also help study the propagation of misinformation related to this outbreak.