Online Communication Shifts in the Midst of the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Case Study on Snapchat
Online Communication Shifts in the Midst of the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Case Study on Snapchat
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Covid-19 大流行期间的在线交流转变：Snapchat 案例研究
DOI：
10.1609/icwsm.v15i1.18107
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发表时间：
2021
影响因子：
2.8
通讯作者：
Neil Shah
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Qi Yang;Weinan Wang;Lucas Pierce;Rajan Vaish;Xiaolin Shi;Neil Shah
Covid-19 大流行使人们相互联系的方式发生了巨大变化，取代了社交距离和隔离措施。越来越多的人开始将在线通信作为面对面互动的必要替代品。尽管如此，研究界对于 Covid-19 的线下影响如何影响在线交流还知之甚少。我们的工作涉及这个主题。具体来说，我们研究了围绕 Covid-19 对在线公共和私人共享倾向的影响、其对在线交流同质性的影响以及美国在线交流与线下病例严重程度之间的相关性的研究问题。为此，我们研究了 7900 万美国用户在 Snapchat（一个大型、领先的移动多媒体驱动的社交共享平台）上的使用模式。我们的研究结果表明，Covid-19 增加了与朋友私下交流的倾向，同时降低了用户外出时公开分享内容的倾向。此外，在线交流发现，不同地点、年龄和性别的基线同质性显着下降，而跨群体交流相对增加。最后，我们观察到，美国各州线下 Covid-19 阳性病例严重程度的增加与 Covid-19 爆发后跨州和州内沟通增加之间的差距扩大以及公共分享的显着下降有关。我们希望我们的发现能够进一步激发人们对流行病和其他长期危机期间在线交流变化的兴趣和工作。
The Covid-19 pandemic has created large shifts in how people stay connected with each other in lieu of social distancing and isolation measures. More and more, individuals have turned to online communications as a necessary replacement for in-person interaction. Despite this, the research community has little understanding of how online communications have been influenced by the offline impacts of Covid-19. Our work touches upon this topic. Specifically, we study research questions around the impact of Covid-19 on online public and private sharing propensity, its influence on online communication homophily, and correlations between online communication and offline case severity in the United States. To do so, we study the usage patterns of 79 million US-based users on Snapchat, a large, leading mobile multimedia-driven social sharing platform. Our findings suggest that Covid-19 has increased propensity to privately communicate with friends, while decreasing propensity to publicly share content when users are out-and-about. Moreover, online communications have observed a marked decrease in baseline homophily across locations, ages and genders, with relative increases in cross-group communications. Finally, we observe that increased offline positive Covid-19 case severity in US states is associated with widening gaps between across-state and within-state communication increases after the onset of Covid-19, as well as marked declines in public sharing. We hope our findings drive further interest and work on online communication changes during pandemics and other extended times of crisis.