Health Fear Mongering Make People More Sicker: Twitter Analysis in the Context of Corona Virus Infection

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to assess the fear factor in Social media data in the context of Coronavirus Disease - 2019(COVID-19) across the globe. The fear generated from social media content will adversely affect the mental health of the public. Design/methodology/approach: The study is followed by a literature survey during the emergence of social media and Internet technologies since the year 2006 where the people commonly started to use the internet across the world. The Twitter data collected on COVID-19 during the infection period and the analysis. Findings: The social media contents adversely affect the mental health of the common public and also the healthcare programs run by the government organizations to some extent. The findings show that the social media are the major source of fear-mongering information and the people behind the fear-mongering are making use of the disaster situation to set their agenda. The strict enactment of law and the efforts by the social media platforms can reduce the fake news and misinformation. Research limitations/implications: The research focuses only on the Twitter data for the analysis during the COVID-19 distress. The detailed study needs to be done in similar distress situations across the globe. The data retrieval became limited from different social media platforms because of privacy issues. © 2020, IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.