COVID-19 Discourse on Twitter in Four Asian Countries: Case Study of Risk Communication.

This paper compares similarities and differences of pandemic-related social media discourse in Asian countries. We observed multiple prominent peaks in the daily tweet counts across all countries, indicating multiple issue-attention cycles. Our analysis identified which topics the public concentrated on; some of these topics were related to misinformation and hate speech. These findings and the ability to quickly identify key topics can empower global efforts to fight against an infodemic during a pandemic.