בחינת יחסה של החברה הישראלית למידע הקשור לנגיף הקורונה וניתוח היקף השיח על המגפה בהסתמך על כלי מחקר מתחום מדע הנתונים

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was great significance to the considerable and diverse information to which people were exposed, particularly regarding the pandemic itself. Because many people search for and consume information through social networks, this study focuses on the information circulated on the social network Facebook. The study’s main research questions are: Do Israeli users relate to information on COVID-19 differently than other information? To what extent did the topic of the pandemic dominate Facebook discourse, and did this vary throughout the different periods of the pandemic?For the purposes of this study, we compiled 552,733 news items and created a broad database of the leading content providers in Israel. We then examined the characteristics of the various news items and their sharing characteristics on Facebook. The results show that COVID-related posts drew more interactions than unrelated posts, mostly eliciting “sad,” “caring,” “angry,” and “love” emojis. In examining the average number of shares over the period, a downward trend is evident. This behavior may be explained by the uncertainty reduction theory.