Researchers Use Twitter Data To Trace The Origin Of COVID-19

JAKARTA - Until now, the origin of COVID-19 is still a hot debate, both in the academic and political spheres. In the early days of the pandemic, many people believed that the virus had spread from a market in Wuhan, China. It's just that a theory has emerged which states that the coronavirus appeared earlier and originated outside China.

This maze of news has finally sparked the emergence of various conspiracy theories surrounding this virus. And in the midst of this still unclear situation, a group of researchers from the IMT School for Advanced Studies used Twitter data to trace the source of the coronavirus.

"Recently, social media has begun to play an important role as a complement to surveillance systems to monitor epidemics and share information and decisions from public health officials or experts," the researchers wrote in a report published in the journal Nature, Monday, January 25.

In a study entitled "Early warnings of COVID-19 outbreaks across Europe from social media", researchers analyzed Twitter data before the pandemic began to spread at the end of 2019. The study collected tweets from netizens with certain keywords related to symptoms of coronavirus infection.

"More specifically, we analyzed the keyword pneumonia for two reasons: (1) pneumonia is the most severe symptom caused by COVID-19; and (2) flu season data in 2020 is lighter than the previous year," explained the researchers.

Then, Twitter data with certain keywords are taken from a number of countries. Until finally the research to find an increase in pneumonia cases a few weeks before the first infection was officially announced by the government.

In addition, this research also finds other facts that are no less interesting. It is known that the emergence of whistleblowers comes from areas that geographically are the starting point for the spread of the coronavirus.

"Our infodemiological approach in studying the spread of COVID-19 across Europe can help policymakers to identify, limit the geography of the spread, and better manage the chain of infection," said the researcher.

Is This Research Reliable?

On the one hand, the evidence included in the study can pinpoint exactly how the coronavirus spread chain. Utilizing the data provided by Twitter as well as calculating the appropriate statistical model is able to demonstrate this.

On the other hand, as we know, Twitter language is anecdotal language. Information containing jokes are greater than factual information submitted by users there.

In addition, it should also be noted that the research limits its study to Europe. So, research with similar methods carried out from several regions is still needed to really get a complete conclusion.

So, the authors also suggest that you don't draw conclusions first. In addition to the fact that there are interesting studies conducted by researchers to uncover the source of the virus that has caused the pandemic for almost a year.