Background: SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2) was spreading rapidly in South Korea at the end of February 2020 following its initial outbreak in China, making Korea the new center of global attention. The role of social media amid the current coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has often been criticized, but little systematic research has been conducted on this issue. Social media functions as a convenient source of information in pandemic situations. Objective: Few infodemiology studies have applied network analysis in conjunction with content analysis. This study investigates information transmission networks and news-sharing behaviors regarding COVID-19 on Twitter in Korea. The real time aggregation of social media data can serve as a starting point for designing strategic messages for health campaigns and establishing an effective communication system during this outbreak. Methods: Korean COVID-19-related Twitter data were collected on February 29, 2020. Our final sample comprised of 43,832 users and 78,233 relationships on Twitter. We generated four networks in terms of key issues regarding COVID-19 in Korea. This study comparatively investigates how COVID-19-related issues have circulated on Twitter through network analysis. Next, we classified top news channels shared via tweets. Lastly, we conducted a content analysis of news frames used in the top-shared sources. Results: The network analysis suggests that the spread of information was faster in the Coronavirus network than in the other networks (Corona19, Shincheon, and Daegu). People who used the word “Coronavirus” communicated more frequently with each other. The spread of information was faster, and the diameter value was lower than for those who used other terms. Many of the news items highlighted the positive roles being played by individuals and groups, directing readers’ attention to the crisis. Ethical issues such as deviant behavior among the population and an entertainment frame highlighting celebrity donations also emerged often. There was a significant difference in the use of nonportal (n=14) and portal news (n=26) sites between the four network types. The news frames used in the top sources were similar across the networks (P=.89, 95% CI 0.004-0.006). Tweets containing medically framed news articles (mean 7.571, SD 1.988) were found to be more popular than tweets that included news articles adopting nonmedical frames (mean 5.060, SD 2.904; N=40, P=.03, 95% CI 0.169-4.852). Conclusions: Most of the popular news on Twitter had nonmedical frames. Nevertheless, the spillover effect of the news articles that delivered medical information about COVID-19 was greater than that of news with nonmedical frames. Social media network analytics cannot replace the work of public health officials; however, monitoring public conversations and media news that propagates rapidly can assist public health professionals in their complex and fast-paced decision-making processes.

Purpose: Digital literacy and related fields have received interests from scholars and practitioners for more than 20 years; nonetheless, academic communities need to systematically review how the fields have developed. This study aims to investigate the research trends of digital literacy and related concepts since the year of 2000, especially in education. Design/methodology/approach: The current study analyzes keywords, co-authorship, and cited publications in digital literacy through the scientometric method. The journal articles have been retrieved from the WoS (Web of Science) using four keywords: “Digital literacy,” “ICT literacy,” “information literacy,” and “media literacy.” Further, keywords, publications, and co-authorship are examined and further classified into clusters for more in-depth investigation. Findings: Digital literacy is a multidisciplinary field that widely embraces literacy, ICT, the Internet, computer skill proficiency, science, nursing, health, and language education. The participants, or study subjects, in digital literacy research range from primary students to professionals, and the co-authorship clusters are distinctive by countries in America and Europe. Research limitations: This paper analyzes one fixed chunk of a dataset obtained by searching for all four keywords at once. Further studies will retrieve the data from diverse disciplines and will trace the change of the leading research themes by time spans. Practical implications: To shed light on the findings, using customized digital literacy curriculums and technology is critical for learners at different ages to nurture digital literacy according to their learning aims. They need to cultivate their understanding of the social impact of exploiting technology and computational thinking. To increase the originality of digital literacy-related studies, researchers from different countries and cultures may collaborate to investigate a broader range of digital literacy environments. Originality/value: The present study reviews research trends in digital literacy and related areas by performing a scientometric study to analyze multidimensional aspects in the fields, including keywords, journal titles, co-authorship, and cited publications.

This study employs content and network analysis techniques to explore the predictors of opinion leadership in a political activism network on Twitter. The results demonstrate the feasibility of using user-generated content to measure user characteristics. The characteristics were analyzed to predict users’ performance in the network. According to the results, Twitter users with higher connectivity and issue involvement are better at influencing information flow on Twitter. User connectivity was measured by betweenness centrality, and issue involvement was measured by a user’s geographic proximity to a given event and the contribution of engaging tweets. In addition, the results show that tweets by organizations had greater influence than those by individual users.

This paper provides a network analysis of the international flow of students among 210 countries and the factors determining the structure of this flow. Among these factors, bilateral hyperlink connections between countries and the number of telephone minutes (communication variables) are the most important predictors of the flow’s structure, followed by trade, the physical distance between countries, a common border between countries and a common language between two countries. The USA is by far the most central country in the flow of international students, followed by China, the UK, France, Germany, Australia and India. These results are discussed in light of World-System Theory. Future research should examine how the network of international student flows changes over time and consider additional factors to provide a better understanding of the network as an international system.