By Konstantina Vasileva, DeLange Analytics Collaborator, Analytics Professional & STEM researcher
Somehow we all woke up in the same dystopian novel. Normalcy reigned supreme just a few days or weeks ago (depending on where we are located on the planet), but now we find ourselves in an unchartered social territory: physically isolated but digitally submerged under a tidal wave of traditional media coverage and social conversations about a single, overwhelming global topic.
No topic in recent history has dominated the media landscape across borders, age groups and media channels so invasively and so consistently. Platforms like Sprinklr detect more than 19mln daily mentions at the current peak of media attention and Google Trends worldwide data shows that web searches for the topic have persisted at values between 88 and 100 between in the past 5 days (Mar 12-17), accompanied by a similar peak in global YouTube searches*.
* A peak of 100 indicates peak popularity for the term
In this flood of online information, it is easy for misleading information to make its way through to global audiences so I was curious to what extent myths and conspiracy theories are competing with content focusing on fact-based scientific research. Google has taken this issue very seriously already, trying to scrub misinformation from YouTube search results, but theories about the role of 5G and the man-made nature of the virus persist in obscure online groups and comment sections.
Meanwhile, the gravity of the epidemic has also had a silver lining: the extreme circumstances have become a major impetus for fostering a “new culture of doing science research” (Science magazine). Open science and collaboration are by no means a new idea in the STEM field, but the current situation has prompted even faster dissemination of newly collected data on preprint servers and exchange of ideas on the favourite social channel of scientists (Twitter) and platforms like Slack.
The situation has become something of a catalyst for research collaboration and public outreach: showing how with the right communications approach social media can become a powerful tool for spreading useful scientific information. In the sea of misinformed online conversations, local and international experts use social media as a tool to send a targeted, accessible message to the general audience and communicate their research in a clear, concise and engaging way (including through increased use of interactive data visualisations). Visualisations have become really impactful when it comes to #FlattenTheCurve: a concept from epidemiology which has gained traction thanks to the animated illustrations of New Zealand cartoonist Toby Morris:
Using a search string with the top trending English-language hashtags and search terms, I looked at global English conversations to see how well content related to scientific research competes with the conspiracy virus. I chose to focus on English searches as multilingual search on the topic requires not just a simple translation but localisation (if I can borrow this from the SEO field): actually adapting your search to culture-specific examples, not only translation (e.g. trending local hashtags or country-specific rumours and myths that might not reflect the global trend).
As everything in media analytics, the parameters you use as input can dramatically change the output. In simple words: depending on how refined or broad your search string criteria are, the things you are comparing might look dramatically different. Focusing only on open science, science communication, preprints and research collaboration, leaves us with the depressing volume of 56K mentions (the faint blue line) compared to 1.4M references to various corona-related conspiracies and myths (i.e that the virus is genetically engineered/man-made biological weapon; that it was caused by 5G (?!?), created by the CIA like HIV or that gargling with bleach can protect you from it) represented by the magenta coloured curve. Adding hashtags like #FlattenTheCurve and references to data visualisation, simulation models, epidemiology and virology-related research shows a much more optimistic picture of the media landscape (the greenish-blue curve). It looks like until the end of February 2020 when the situation in Italy started to escalate, online coverage was split between a curiosity for conspiracy and anchoring claims in scientific facts. From then on, however, we see an encouraging peak in content referring to research and scientific findings or referring to scientists and relevant experts. Unfortunately, conspiracy-laden conversations are more likely to happen on the dark web, via private accounts or messaging apps but it is reassuring that media coverage and public conversations try to resist it.
There is also another interesting trend in how the public focus (and correspondingly, the media coverage) has shifted in the past few weeks. The growing global spread and the increasing death toll of the pandemic in mid-January prompted media content mainly on the dangers associated with the virus and its possible deadly outcomes for vulnerable groups (the magenta-coloured curve).
Discussions on the financial toll and economic consequences (the blue curve) were starting to peek through but still lagged significantly behind health concerns. As lockdowns started to spread across countries around the world and the movement of people became increasingly restricted, the conversation about the economic consequences of the pandemic started to catch up with the concerns about fatal outcomes. Right now the graph shows that the conversation is starting to shift: focusing on the long term economic consequences of the current situation.
What lies ahead? We don’t know yet, but as Yuval Noah Harari eloquently put it in the Financial Times: “every crisis is also an opportunity…If we choose global solidarity, it will be a victory not only against the coronavirus, but against all future epidemics and crises that might assail humankind in the 21st century.”
Published by AMEC on 25 March 2020 and Medium on 28 March 2020