JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Epidemics and outbreaks present arduous challenges requiring both individual and communal efforts. The significant medical, emotional and financial burden associated with epidemics creates feelings of distrust, fear and loss of control, making vulnerable populations prone to exploitation and manipulation through misinformation, rumors and conspiracies. The use of social media sites has increased in the last decade. As a result, significant amounts of public data can be leveraged for bio-surveillance. Social media sites also can also provide a platform to quickly and efficiently reach a sizeable percentage of the population, hence their potential role in various aspects of epidemic mitigation.

Objective:

The general objective of this systematic literature review is to provide a methodical overview of the integration of social media in three epidemic-related contexts: epidemic monitoring, misinformation detection and the relationship with mental health. The aim is to understand how has social media been used efficiently in these contexts, and which gaps need further research efforts.

Methods:

Three research questions related to epidemic monitoring, misinformation and mental health, were conceptualized for this review. In the first PRISMA stage, 13522 publications were collected from several digital libraries (Pubmed, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, MDPI, ACM and ACL) and grey literature sources (Arxiv and ProQuest), spanning the 2010- 2022 period. 242 papers were selected for inclusion and were synthesized to identify themes, methods, epidemics studied and social media sites used.

Results:

5 main themes were identified in the literature: epidemic forecasting and surveillance, public opinion understanding, fake news identification and characterization, mental health assessment, and association of social media use with psychological outcomes. Social media data was found to be an efficient tool to gauge public response, monitor discourse, identify misleading and fake news, and estimate the mental health toll of epidemics. Findings uncovered a need for more robust applications of lessons learned from epidemic ‘post-mortem documentation’. A vast gap exists between retrospective analysis of epidemic management and result integration in prospective studies.

Conclusions:

Harnessing the full potential of social media in epidemic related tasks requires streamlining the results of epidemic forecasting, public opinion understanding and misinformation detection, all while keeping abreast of potential mental health implications. Pro-active prevention has thus become vital for epidemic curtailment and containment.