Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Nov 26, 2022
Date Accepted: May 15, 2023
Date Submitted to PubMed: May 31, 2023
Reddit and Google Activity Related to Non-COVID Epidemic Diseases Surged at Start of COVID-19 Pandemic: Retrospective Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Resources such as Google Trends and Reddit provide opportunities to gauge real-time popular interest in public health issues. However, use of these free resources to optimize public health campaigns has been limited.
Objective:
To determine whether early public awareness of COVID-19 correlated with elevated public interest in non-COVID infectious diseases with epidemic potential.
Methods:
Google Trends search data and Reddit comment data were analyzed from 2018 through 2020 for the frequency of keywords “Chikungunya”, “Ebola”, “H1N1”, “MERS”, “SARS”, and “Zika”, six highly publicized epidemics in recent decades.
Results:
Google Trends and Reddit Data both demonstrate large and significant increases in the usage of each evaluated disease term through at least the initial months of the pandemic.
Conclusions:
The start of the COVID-19 pandemic correlated with increased public interest in other epidemic infectious diseases. Google Trends and Reddit can readily be used to evaluate real-time general interest levels in public health related topics, providing a tool to better time and direct public health initiatives that require a receptive target audience.
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