COVID-19 UK Social Media Dataset for Public Health Research

Plant, Richard; Hussain, Amir; Sheikh, Aziz

Abstract

We present a benchmark database of public social media postings from the United Kingdom related to the Covid-19 pandemic for academic research purposes, along with some initial analysis, including a taxonomy of key themes organised by keyword. This release supports the findings of a research study funded by the Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office that aims to investigate social sentiment in order to understand the response to public health measures implemented during the pandemic.

Updated to version 1.1 on 13 May 2021

Citation

Plant, R., Hussain, A., & Sheikh, A. (2021). COVID-19 UK Social Media Dataset for Public Health Research. [Data]. https://doi.org/10.17869/enu.2021.2755974

• Online Publication Date: Mar 29, 2021
• Publication Date: Mar 29, 2021
• Deposit Date: Mar 29, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 29, 2021
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.17869/enu.2021.2755974
• Keywords: covid, covid-19, social media, UK
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2755974
• Related Public URLs: http://arxiv.org/abs/2103.16446
• Type of Data: CSV
• Collection Date: Jan 1, 2020
• Collection Method: Data were gathered from the Twitter social network and Facebook via the Crowdtangle platform. We harvested messages within our defined regional boundaries, and defined our stream filter parameters to harvest all messages tagged with a geographical location within the United Kingdom . Pre-processing for data was limited to the removal of line ending characters (\n and \r), as well as annotation with a theme ID determined by keyword frequency analysis, drawn from a pre-determined list of themes and keywords.; ; Full details of the collection and processing methodology can be viewed at https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.16446.
• Additional Information: Dataset is delivered as a set of CSV files. The messages are separated by network and month, each row consisting of:; ; Date, Message ID (Tweet ID/Crowdtangle ID), Theme ID; ; A key to the themes identified for each message can be found below:; ; 0: Test & Protect; 1: Shielding; 2: Care homes; 3: Covid survivors; 4: Resumption of health services; 5: Mental health & loneliness; 6: Trust in Scottish Government; 7: Routemap to exit lockdown; 8: Impact on BAME population; 9: Inequalities; 10: Community cohesion/solidarity; 11: Education; 12: Environment; 13: Quality of life; 14: Social/Family; 15: Leisure/Entertainment; 16: Travel; 17: Business restrictions; 18: Work; 19: Hygiene; 20: Shopping; 21: Unemployment; 22: Business growth; 23: Other