Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40666148›Full record

ArticleFrontiers in public health2025

How politics affect pandemic forecasting: spatio-temporal early warning capabilities of different geo-social media topics in the context of state-level political leaning.

Dorian Arifi, Bernd Resch, Mauricio Santillana, Steffen Knoblauch, Sven Lautenbach, Thomas Jaenisch, Ivonne Morales

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Frontiers in public health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

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0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

7 authors.

Dorian ArifiIT:U Interdisciplinary Transformation University Austria, Linz, Austria.
Bernd ReschIT:U Interdisciplinary Transformation University Austria, Linz, Austria.
Mauricio SantillanaMachine Intelligence Group for the Betterment of Health and the Environment, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, United States.
Steffen KnoblauchKlaus Tschira Stiftung, Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology, Heidelberg, Germany.
Sven LautenbachKlaus Tschira Stiftung, Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology, Heidelberg, Germany.
Thomas JaenischColorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado Boulder, Aurora, CO, United States.
Ivonne MoralesDepartment of Infectious Diseases, Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Objectives: Due to political polarization, adherence to public health measures varied across US states during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although social media posts have been shown effective in anticipating COVID-19 surges, the impact of political leaning on the effectiveness of different topics for early warning remains mostly unexplored. Our study examines the spatio-temporal early warning potential of different geo-social media topics across republican, democrat, and swing states. Methods: Using keyword filtering, we identified eight COVID-19-related geo-social media topics. We then utilized Chatterjee's rank correlation to assess their early warning capability for COVID-19 cases 7 to 42 days in advance across six infection waves. A mixed-effect model was used to evaluate the impact of timeframe and political leaning on the early warning capabilities of these topics. Results: Many topics exhibited significant spatial clustering over time, with quarantine and vaccination-related posts occurring in opposing spatial regimes in the second timeframe. We also found significant variation in the early warning capabilities of geo-social media topics over time and across political clusters. In detail, quarantine related geo-social media post were significantly less correlated to COVID-19 cases in republican states than in democrat states. Further, preventive measure and quarantine-related posts exhibited declining correlations to COVID-19 cases over time, while the correlations of vaccine and virus-related posts with COVID-19 infections. Conclusion: Our results highlight the need for a dynamic spatially targeted approach that accounts for both how regional geosocial media topics of interest change over time and the impact of local political ideology on their epidemiological early warning capabilities.

Indexed as

COVID-19PandemicsPoliticsSocial MediaForecastingHumansPublic HealthQuarantineSARS-CoV-2Spatio-Temporal AnalysisUnited Statesepidemiological early warninggeo-social mediapolitical polarizationspatio-temporal epidemiologyspatio-temporal semantic analysis

Identifiers

PMID40666148
PMCPMC12259613

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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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.