J Med Internet Res. 2021 Feb 18. doi: 10.2196/26331. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: In the current days of widespread access to the internet, we can monitor public interest in a topic based on information-targeted web browsing. We sought to provide direct proof of the altered use of medical knowledge from Wikipedia by the global population due to the new COVID-19 pandemic and related global restrictions.
OBJECTIVE: To identify temporal search trends and quantify changes in access to Wikipedia Medicine articles related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
METHODS: We performed a retrospective analysis of medical articles from Wikipedia across nine languages paired with country-specific statistics of registered deaths due to COVID-10. The observed patterns were compared with a modelled forecast of Wikipedia use trained on data from 2015-2019 and analysed in-depth concerning specific articles and their access count similarities in years prior and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Articles linked to the ones directly associated with the pandemic were evaluated in terms of degrees of separation and analysed to identify similarities in access numbers. Article access numbers were correlated with that of the cases diagnosed and deaths to determine factors driving the interest in these articles and shifts of public interest during the subsequent phases of the pandemic.
RESULTS: We observed a significant (p<.0001) increase in the number of entries on Wikipedia medical articles in the pandemic period. The increased interest in COVID-related articles correlated with global deaths temporally while presenting a constant correlation with region-specific deaths. Articles with a low number of degrees of separation shared a statistically significant similarity(p<.0001) of access patterns demonstrating information-seeking patterns.
CONCLUSIONS: An analysis of Wikipedias’ medical article popularity could be a successful tool for epidemiologic surveillance by providing important information about the reasons that trigger public attention and factors that sustain it in the long run. Moreover, the users can be potentially directed to credible valuable information sources linked with the most prominent articles.
PMID:33667176 | DOI:10.2196/26331
