Evidence map›Paper›PMID 36530702›Full record

ArticleFrontiers in public health2022

Nowcasting unemployment rate during the COVID-19 pandemic using Twitter data: The case of South Africa.

Zahra Movahedi Nia, Ali Asgary, Nicola Bragazzi, Bruce Mellado, James Orbinski, Jianhong Wu, Jude Kong

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Frontiers in public health, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
5citing papers in PubMed
1.1field-weighted citation impact, top 18% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

5 citing papers in PubMed, 8 citations in OpenAlex.

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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

7 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.

Zahra Movahedi NiaAfrica-Canada Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation Consortium (ACADIC), Laboratory for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Ali AsgaryAfrica-Canada Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation Consortium (ACADIC), The Advanced Disaster, Emergency and Rapid Response Program, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Nicola BragazziAfrica-Canada Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation Consortium (ACADIC), Laboratory for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Bruce MelladoAfrica-Canada Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation Consortium (ACADIC), Schools of Physics, Institute for Collider Particle Physics, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
James OrbinskiAfrica-Canada Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation Consortium (ACADIC), The Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Jianhong WuAfrica-Canada Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation Consortium (ACADIC), Laboratory for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Jude KongAfrica-Canada Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation Consortium (ACADIC), Laboratory for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada.
York University · CAUniversity of the Witwatersrand · ZA

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The global economy has been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries are experiencing a severe and destructive recession. A significant number of firms and businesses have gone bankrupt or been scaled down, and many individuals have lost their jobs. The main goal of this study is to support policy- and decision-makers with additional and real-time information about the labor market flow using Twitter data. We leverage the data to trace and nowcast the unemployment rate of South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, we create a dataset of unemployment-related tweets using certain keywords. Principal Component Regression (PCR) is then applied to nowcast the unemployment rate using the gathered tweets and their sentiment scores. Numerical results indicate that the volume of the tweets has a positive correlation, and the sentiments of the tweets have a negative correlation with the unemployment rate during and before the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the now-casted unemployment rate using PCR has an outstanding evaluation result with a low Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE), Symmetric MAPE (SMAPE) of 0.921, 0.018, 0.018, respectively and a high R

Indexed as

COVID-19Social MediaHumansPandemicsSouth AfricaUnemploymentCOVID-19Google Mobility Indexlabor marketsentiment analysissocial mediaSouth AfricaTwitter dataunemployment rate

Identifiers

PMID36530702
PMCPMC9757491
OpenAlexW4310539674

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.