Coronavirus-related online web search desire amidst the rising novel coronavirus incidence in Ethiopia: Google Trends-based infodemiology

  1. Behailu Terefe
  2. Alessandro Rovetta
  3. Asha K Rajan
  4. Mengist Awoke

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Abstract

Background

During disease outbreaks, social communication and behaviors are very important to contain the outbreak. Under such circumstances, individual activities on online platforms will increase tremendously. This will result in the circulation useful or misleading/misinformation (infodemic monikers) in the community. Thus, exploring the online trending information is highly crucial in the process of containing disease outbreak. Therefore, this study aimed to explore users’ concerns towards coronavirus-related online web search activities and to investigate the extent of misleading terms adopted for identifying the virus in the early stage of COVID-19 spread in Ethiopia.

Methods

Google Trends was employed in exploring the tendency towards coronavirus-related web search activities in Ethiopia from March 13 to May 8, 2020. Keywords of the different names of COVID-19 and health-related issues were used to investigate the trends of public interest in searching from Google over time. Relative search volume (RSV) and Average peak comparison (APC) were used to compare the trends of online search interests. Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated to check for the presence of correlation.

Result

During the study period, “corona,” “virus,” “coronavirus,” “corona virus”, “China coronavirus,” and “COVID-19”, were the top names users adopted to identify the virus. In almost all search activities, the users’ employed infodemic monikers to identify the virus (99%). “Updates” related issues (APC=60, 95% CI, 55 – 66) were the most commonly trending health-related searches on Google followed by mortality (APC=27, 95% CI, 24 – 30) and symptoms (APC=55, 95% CI, 50 – 60) related issues. The regional comparison showed the highest cumulative peak for the Oromia region on querying health-related information from Google.

Conclusion

This study revealed an initial increase in the public interest of COVID-19 related Google search, but this interest was declined over time. Tremendous circulation of infodemic monikers for the identification of the virus was also noticed in the country. The authors recommend concerned stakeholders to work immensely to keep the public alert on coronavirus-related issues and to promote the official names of the virus to decrease the circulation of misleading and misinformation amid the outbreak.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.07.23.20158592: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    This website analyzes the types and trends of information searched from Google across different geographical areas and languages over a specific period.
    Google
    suggested: (Google, RRID:SCR_017097)

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.07.23.20158592v1 on medRxiv