ArticleHuman behavior and emerging technologies2020
Political polarization drives online conversations about COVID-19 in the United States.
Article in Human behavior and emerging technologies, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 63 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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Who cites it
63 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Drivers of health polarization during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review.Science advances · 2025Pooled it
- Antecedents and consequences of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs: A systematic review.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2022Pooled it
- Regional and temporal patterns of partisan polarization during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and Canada.PloS one · 2026Article
- Early generational and partisan divides in vaccine acceptance in USA during the COVID-19 pandemic.Health promotion international · 2025Article
- Alternative theories of COVID-19: social dimensions and information sources.Journal of public health policy · 2025Review
- Political identity and risk politics: Evidence from a pandemic.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2025Article
- The Impact of Stay-At-Home Mandates on Uncertainty and Sentiments: Quasi-Experimental Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Public Health Messaging on Twitter During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Observational Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Observational
- Article
- How politics affect pandemic forecasting: spatio-temporal early warning capabilities of different geo-social media topics in the context of state-level political leaning.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- DSD-related attitudes and beliefs held by pediatric endocrinologists and urologists: Insights from the North American disorders/differences of sex development (DSD) clinician survey.Journal of pediatric urology · 2024Article
- Political Party Collective Norms, Perceived Norms, and Mask Wearing Behavior: A Test of the Theory of Normative Social Behavior.Health communication · 2024Article
- How individuals' opinions influence society's resistance to epidemics: an agent-based model approach.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Article
- Exploring vaccine hesitancy in digital public discourse: From tribal polarization to socio-economic disparities.PloS one · 2024Article
- Incivility in COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Discourse and Moral Foundations: Natural Language Processing Approach.JMIR formative research · 2023Article
- Beyond the surface: accounting for confounders in understanding the link between collectivism and COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.BMC public health · 2023Article
- The politicized pandemic: Ideological polarization and the behavioral response to COVID-19.European economic review · 2023Article
- Polarization in COVID-19 Vaccine Discussion Networks.American politics research · 2023Article
- How does Twitter account moderation work? Dynamics of account creation and suspension on Twitter during major geopolitical events.EPJ data science · 2023Article
3 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Since the outbreak in China in late 2019, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread around the world and has come to dominate online conversations. By linking 2.3 million Twitter users to locations within the United States, we study in aggregate how political characteristics of the locations affect the evolution of online discussions about COVID-19. We show that COVID-19 chatter in the United States is largely shaped by political polarization. Partisanship correlates with sentiment toward government measures and the tendency to share health and prevention messaging. Cross-ideological interactions are modulated by user segregation and polarized network structure. We also observe a correlation between user engagement with topics related to public health and the varying impact of the disease outbreak in different U.S. states. These findings may help inform policies both online and offline. Decision-makers may calibrate their use of online platforms to measure the effectiveness of public health campaigns, and to monitor the reception of national and state-level policies, by tracking in real-time discussions in a highly polarized social media ecosystem.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.