The dynamics of polarization and online opinion formation: perspectives on unfolding COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

In December 2019, an outbreak of infectious disease, later named as COVID-19 and was declared as a pandemic, was first reported to WHO [1]. Since then, there have been 25,406,588 confirmed cases and 850,878 reported deaths due to COVID-19 worldwide up to the day of writing this project proposal as of 31st August 2020 [2]. This onslaught of a pandemic has generated a massive amount of data across the world each day. This data pertains to information such as the number of cases identified, number of deaths, number of people who have recovered, geographies which are hotspots, geographies which have the potential to become a hotspot, government’s response to the outbreak, the evolution of people’s behavior and beliefs during the time of the pandemic. As per a report published by Rani Molla in Vox.com, social media analytics platform Sprinkler counted nearly 20 million mentions of coronavirus-related terms on March 11. For context on just how significant that number is, mentions of the newly canceled NBA games were under 2 million, and mentions of Trump were about 4 million on that day [3].