Tweet Analysis for Enhancement of COVID-19 Epidemic Simulation: A Case Study in Japan

TL;DR

This study investigates how Twitter reactions in Japan relate to COVID-19 epidemic progression and demonstrates that social media data can support epidemic prediction efforts.

Contribution

It introduces a method to analyze Japanese Twitter data to enhance COVID-19 epidemic simulation and prediction models.

Findings

Social media reactions correlate with epidemic trends.

Twitter data can improve epidemic forecasting accuracy.

Social media analysis offers valuable insights for pandemic response.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in December 2019, progressed in a complicated manner and thus caused problems worldwide. Seeking clues to the reasons for the complicated progression is necessary but challenging in the fight against the pandemic. We sought clues by investigating the relationship between reactions on social media and the COVID-19 epidemic in Japan. Twitter was selected as the social media platform for study because it has a large user base in Japan and because it quickly propagates short topic-focused messages ("tweets"). Analysis using Japanese Twitter data suggests that reactions on social media and the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic may have a close relationship. Experiments to evaluate the potential of using tweets to support the prediction of how an epidemic will progress demonstrated the value of using epidemic-related social media data. Our findings provide insights into the relationship between user reactions on social media, particularly Twitter, and epidemic progression, which can be used to fight pandemics.