{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/using-twitter-data-to-understand-public","title":"Using Twitter Data to Understand Public Perceptions of Approved versus Off-label Use for COVID-19-related Medications","arxiv_id":"2206.14358","date":"2022-06-29","proceeding":null,"authors":["Yining Hua","Hang Jiang","Shixu Lin","Jie Yang","Joseph M. Plasek","David W. Bates","Li Zhou"],"abstract":"Understanding public discourse on emergency use of unproven therapeutics is crucial for monitoring safe use and combating misinformation. We developed a natural language processing-based pipeline to comprehend public perceptions of and stances on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-related drugs on Twitter over time. This retrospective study included 609,189 US-based tweets from January 29, 2020, to November 30, 2021, about four drugs that garnered significant public attention during the COVID-19 pandemic: (1) Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, therapies with anecdotal evidence; and (2) Molnupiravir and Remdesivir, FDA-approved treatments for eligible patients. Time-trend analysis was employed to understand popularity trends and related events. Content and demographic analyses were conducted to explore potential rationales behind people's stances on each drug. Time-trend analysis indicated that Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin were discussed more than Molnupiravir and Remdesivir, particularly during COVID-19 surges. Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin discussions were highly politicized, related to conspiracy theories, hearsay, and celebrity influences. The distribution of stances between the two major US political parties was significantly different (P < .001); Republicans were more likely to support Hydroxychloroquine (55%) and Ivermectin (30%) than Democrats. People with healthcare backgrounds tended to oppose Hydroxychloroquine (7%) more than the general population, while the general population was more likely to support Ivermectin (14%). Our study found that social media users have varying perceptions and stances on off-label versus FDA-authorized drug use at different stages of COVID-19. This indicates that health systems, regulatory agencies, and policymakers should design tailored strategies to monitor and reduce misinformation to promote safe drug use.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.14358v2","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.14358v2.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"using-twitter-data-to-understand-public","repo_url":"https://github.com/ningkko/covid-drug","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"pytorch","reach":{"status":"ok"}}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"misinformation","task_name":"Misinformation"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2206.14358","mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}