A bibliometric and co-occurrence analysis of COVID-19–related literature published between December 2019 and June 2020

Md. Sayeed Al-Zaman 한국과학학술지편집인협의회 2021 Science Editing Vol.8 No.1

Purpose The main purposes of this study were to analyze the document types and languages of published papers on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), along with the top authors, publications, countries, institutions, and disciplines, and to analyze the co-occurrence of keywords and bibliographic coupling of countries and sources of the most-cited COVID-19 literature. Methods This study analyzed 16,384 COVID-19 studies published between December 2019 and June 2020. The data were extracted from the Web of Science database using four keywords: “COVID-19,” “coronavirus,” “2019-nCoV,” and “SARS-CoV-2.” The top 500 mostcited documents were analyzed for bibliographic and citation network visualization. Results The studies were published in 19 different languages, and English (95.313%) was the most common. Of 157 research-producing countries, the United States (25.433%) was in the leading position. Wang Y (n=94) was the top author, and the BMJ (n=488) was the top source. The University of London (n=488) was the leading organization, and medicine-related papers (n=2,259) accounted for the highest proportion. The co-occurrence of keywords analysis identified “coronavirus,” “COVID-19,” “SARS-CoV-2,” “2019-nCoV,” and “pneumonia” as the most frequent words. The bibliographic coupling analysis of countries and sources showed the strongest collaborative links between China and the United States and between the New England Journal of Medicine and the JAMA. Conclusion Collaboration between the United States and China was key in COVID-19 research during this period. Although BMJ was the leading title for COVID-19 articles, the co-author link between New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA was the strongest.

Social Media Rumors in Bangladesh

Al-Zaman, Md. Sayeed,Sife, Sifat Al,Sultana, Musfika,Akbar, Mahbuba,Ahona, Kazi Taznahel Sultana,Sarkar, Nandita Korea Institute of Science and Technology Informat 2020 Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice Vol.8 No.3

This study analyzes N=181 social media rumors from Bangladesh to find out the most popular themes, sources, and aims. The result shows that social media rumors have seven popular themes: political, health & education, crime & human rights, religious, religiopolitical, entertainment, and other. Also, online media and mainstream media are the two main sources of social media rumors, along with three tentative aims: positive, negative, and unknown. A few major findings of this research are: Political rumors dominate social media, but its percentage is decreasing, while religion-related rumors are increasing; most of the social media rumors are negative and emerge from online media, and social media itself is the dominant online source of social media rumors; and, most of the health-related rumors are negative and surge during a crisis period, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper identifies some of its limitations with the data collection period, data source, and data analysis. Providing a few research directions, this study also elucidates the contributions of its results in academia and policymaking.

Social Media News in Crisis? Popularity Analysis of the Top Nine Facebook Pages of Bangladeshi News Media

Al-Zaman, Md. Sayeed,Noman, Mridha Md. Shiblee Korea Institute of Science and Technology Informat 2021 Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice Vol.9 No.2

Social media has become a popular source of information around the world. Previous studies explored different trends of social media news consumption. However, no studies have focused on Bangladesh to date, where social media penetration is very high in recent years. To fill this gap, this research aimed to understand its popularity trends during the period. For that reason, this work analyzes 97.67 million page likes and 3.48 billion interaction data collected from nine Bangladeshi news media's Facebook pages between December 2016 to November 2020. The analysis shows that the growth rates of page likes and interaction rates declined during this period. It suggests that the media's Facebook pages are gradually losing their popularity among Facebook users, which may have two more interpretations: Facebook's aggregate appeal as a news source is decreasing to users, or Bangladeshi media's appeal is eroding to Facebook users. These findings challenge the previous results, i.e., Facebook's demand as a news source is increasing with time. We offer four explanations of the decreased popularity of Facebook's news: information overload, exposure to incidental news, users' selective exposure and different aims of using Facebook, and conflict between media agendas and users' interests. Some theoretical and practical significance of the results has been discussed as well.

Social Media Celebrities in Bangladesh

Md. Sayeed Al-Zaman 한국과학기술정보연구원 2023 Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice Vol.11 No.1

This study endeavors to answer four research questions: (a) Who are the celebrities? (b) How popular are they? (c) What do they post on social media platforms? (d) How do their followers react to them? Following quantitative methods, this study analyzes the top 195 Facebook celebrities of Bangladesh and their 9,441 Facebook posts’ interactions. The result suggests that actors, music-related celebrities, and sports stars are the most popular celebrities. While male celebrities have a higher frequency, female celebrities have higher average followers than their male counterparts. Celebrities mostly share photos on Facebook, perhaps to recreate their public images and provide regular updates to their followers. The followers also engage the most in photos with affection and surprise reactions. Their reactions to celebrities’ Facebook content are highly positive. Some strengths and limitations of this study are also discussed.

Social Media Fake News in India

Al-Zaman, Md. Sayeed Center for Asian Public Opinion ResearchCollaborat 2021 Asian journal for public opinion research Vol.9 No.1

This study analyzes 419 fake news items published in India, a fake-news-prone country, to identify the major themes, content types, and sources of social media fake news. The results show that fake news shared on social media has six major themes: health, religion, politics, crime, entertainment, and miscellaneous; eight types of content: text, photo, audio, and video, text & photo, text & video, photo & video, and text & photo & video; and two main sources: online sources and the mainstream media. Health-related fake news is more common only during a health crisis, whereas fake news related to religion and politics seems more prevalent, emerging from online media. Text & photo and text & video have three-fourths of the total share of fake news, and most of them are from online media: online media is the main source of fake news on social media as well. On the other hand, mainstream media mostly produces political fake news. This study, presenting some novel findings that may help researchers to understand and policymakers to control fake news on social media, invites more academic investigations of religious and political fake news in India. Two important limitations of this study are related to the data source and data collection period, which may have an impact on the results.

Users’ Reactions to Rape News Shared on Social Media: An Analysis of Five Facebook Reaction Buttons

Md. Sayeed Al-Zaman,Tasnuva Alam Ahona 충남대학교 아시아여론연구소 2022 Asian journal for public opinion research Vol.10 No.1

This study investigated 3.50 million Facebook reactions collected from 9,429 Bangladeshi news articles about rape shared on social media from 2016 to 2021. The primary aim of this study was to understand users’ different reaction patterns based on the five major Facebook reactions (i.e., love, haha, wow, sad, and angry). Based on the theories of emotion, we quantitatively answer one research question: How do social media users react to rape with the five major Facebook reactions? The results suggest that users are more likely to express disdain toward rape and sympathy toward the victims using Facebook reactions by using the angry button, along with the sad button. In rape news, both reactions are consistent and maintain a strong positive correlation, meaning they increase and decrease together. Although many users tend to mock and laugh at rape incidents and the victims, trend lines suggest that such expressions may not be consistent with time. Despite contextual relevance, we presume that in socially and morally unacceptable events like rape and war, the valences of reactions alter to some extent: angry and sad usually become positive, while love, wow, and haha become negative. Some strengths and limitations of the study are discussed as well.

Online Misogyny in Bangladesh

Md. Sayeed Al-Zaman 숙명여자대학교 아시아여성연구원 2021 Asian Women Vol.37 No.3

This study, focusing on “Do not stand too close to my body,” a Bangladeshi online feminist campaign, sought to understand how men react to women in cyberspace and use Islam to sustain misogyny. Two research inquiries guided the research: Men’s reaction to women and women-related issues, and men’s attempts to use Islam to justify and sustain misogyny online. To answer the research questions, 1,474 Facebook comments were analyzed following a qualitative content analysis method. The findings show that men react to women aggressively in social media and such reactions have two main propensities. One is that men shame and denigrate women, the other that men try to justify their aggression and blame the victimized women for their victimhood. In addition, men use Islam to justify and sustain misogyny: They rebuke women for not being decent enough according to the patriarchic version of Islam, and they defend their patriarchal aggression against women and justify it as an expected outcome of disobeying the Islamic code of conduct. These closely related propensities also suggest a conflictual interrelationship between men and women in social media, where men endeavor to dominate the communication. Identifying a few limitations related to the methodology and findings, this article also suggests some practical applications of the results.