Emergence of knowledge communities and information centralization during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Published in: Social science & medicine (1982) Vol. 285; p. 114215
• Main Authors: Sacco, Pier Luigi, Gallotti, Riccardo, Pilati, Federico, Castaldo, Nicola, De Domenico, Manlio
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01.09.2021; Pergamon Press Inc
• Subjects: Behavioral responses; Centralization; Communication; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Global Communication; Health care policy; Health planning; Humans; Infodemic; Information; Information content; Information dissemination; Information sharing; Mass media; Mental health; News; News media; Pandemics; Public Health; SARS-CoV-2; Social Media; Social participation; Global Communication; Public Health; Infodemic
• ISSN: 0277-9536; 1873-5347; 1873-5347
• DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114215

As COVID-19 spreads worldwide, an infodemic – i.e., an over-abundance of information, reliable or not – spreads across the physical and the digital worlds, triggering behavioral responses which cause public health concern. We study 200 million interactions captured from Twitter during the early stage of the pandemic, from January to April 2020, to understand its socio-informational structure on a global scale. The COVID-19 global communication network is characterized by knowledge groups, hierarchically organized in sub-groups with well-defined geo-political and ideological characteristics. Communication is mostly segregated within groups and driven by a small number of subjects: 0.1% of users account for up to 45% and 10% of activities and news shared, respectively, centralizing the information flow. Contradicting the idea that digital social media favor active participation and co-creation of online content, our results imply that public health policy strategies to counter the effects of the infodemic must not only focus on information content, but also on the social articulation of its diffusion mechanisms, as a given community tends to be relatively impermeable to news generated by non-aligned sources. •Global communication related to Covid-19 is characterized by knowledge communities.•Information cascades are segregated within groups and driven by few subjects.•Communities are relatively impermeable to news generated by non-aligned sources.•Political orientations play a strong structuring role on community identity.•Scientific communication is a marginal fringe of the digital information ecosystem.