If there is anything that spreads much quicker than the latest viral strain of novel COVID-19, it is the spread of the viral strain on the virtual media. While it is true that most of the modern world is connected and that connection is being harbored by several social media handles. As the novel viral strain spread so did its ramifications along with several thousand articles and video clips all along with the virtual world. As each day goes by with the virus’s inception, the virtual world of social media keeps on filling up with new articles along with some questionable content.
Sprinklr counted a record of 20 million mentions of the viral strain on March 11. In retrospect, the recently canceled NBA games and the POTUS counts were recorded in the range of 2 million and 4 million respectively. “With 19 million mentions across social media and news sites related to Covid-19 in the past 24 hours alone around the world, it’s clear that coronavirus is the first global pandemic that is unfolding on social media with unprecedented volumes of conversations happening every second,” quotes Grad Conn, Sprinklr chief experience and marketing officer.
Google’s search traffic centering around the word coronavirus reached peak traffic at a record of 100, which incidentally is Google’s highest level of a score for quantifying on Google Trends for last month. “I haven’t seen anything like this,” Simon Rogers, data editor on the News Lab team at Google. “People are not panic searching,” Rogers further quotes. “People are looking for reliable info like, ‘How long should I wash my hands?”
Articles in the form of questionable content have also risen. Google itself has been actively trying to wrangle unwanted content off its handle by routinely running algorithms while YouTube has started a policy of blocking videos from its website when inquired by a government official of any kind. The pandemic which has now been granted official status by the WHO is one of the most talked-about topics on the internet in the last month and for good reason.