When Infodemic Meets Epidemic: Systematic Literature Review

BACKGROUND

Epidemics and outbreaks present arduous challenges, requiring both individual and communal efforts. The significant medical, emotional, and financial burden associated with epidemics creates feelings of distrust, fear, and loss of control, making vulnerable populations prone to exploitation and manipulation through misinformation, rumors, and conspiracies. The use of social media sites has increased in the last decade. As a result, significant amounts of public data can be leveraged for biosurveillance. Social media sites can also provide a platform to quickly and efficiently reach a sizable percentage of the population; therefore, they have a potential role in various aspects of epidemic mitigation.

OBJECTIVE

This systematic literature review aimed to provide a methodical overview of the integration of social media in 3 epidemic-related contexts: epidemic monitoring, misinformation detection, and the relationship with mental health. The aim is to understand how social media has been used efficiently in these contexts, and which gaps need further research efforts.

METHODS

Three research questions, related to epidemic monitoring, misinformation, and mental health, were conceptualized for this review. In the first PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) stage, 13,522 publications were collected from several digital libraries (PubMed, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, MDPI, ACM, and ACL) and gray literature sources (arXiv and ProQuest), spanning from 2010 to 2022. A total of 242 (1.79%) papers were selected for inclusion and were synthesized to identify themes, methods, epidemics studied, and social media sites used.

RESULTS

Five main themes were identified in the literature, as follows: epidemic forecasting and surveillance, public opinion understanding, fake news identification and characterization, mental health assessment, and association of social media use with psychological outcomes. Social media data were found to be an efficient tool to gauge public response, monitor discourse, identify misleading and fake news, and estimate the mental health toll of epidemics. Findings uncovered a need for more robust applications of lessons learned from epidemic "postmortem documentation." A vast gap exists between retrospective analysis of epidemic management and result integration in prospective studies.

CONCLUSIONS

Harnessing the full potential of social media in epidemic-related tasks requires streamlining the results of epidemic forecasting, public opinion understanding, and misinformation detection, all while keeping abreast of potential mental health implications. Proactive prevention has thus become vital for epidemic curtailment and containment.