Tracking and Managing Economic and Social Impact of COVID-19 through Collective Emotions, Media Traces, and Satellite-Based Remote Sensing Data

This twenty-four month research project uses media trace and satellite-based remote sensing data to examine and manage the economic and social impact of collective emotions, emotional contagions, and pandemic-induced fear during the COVID-19 pandemic. It further provides policy makers, health care officials, and disaster mitigation workers with a global early warning system that synthesizes media trace data and satellite-based remote sensing data into an open-access online platform. In doing so, it answers the SNSF proposal call to examine the societal impact of COVID-19 at large; understand and combat misinformation, stigma, and fear; examine the impact of official and social media communications; and support global coordination and crisis management. Our research team has taken the lead in our field in the use of highly technical data sources and methods to estimate and manage the economic and social impacts of COVID-19 and other natural threats. Our use of media trace data and satellite-based remote sensing data for COVID-19 research has twice been featured in MIT Sloan Management Review. Our research leverages an in-house platform with information on over a quarter of a billion news articles, along with custom code for analyzing satellite-based remote sensing data, to accelerate time to delivery and mitigate project risk. As a result, all of the proposed deliverables are low-risk and will be delivered within twenty-four months from the start of the project. This research project consists of three work packages (WP). WP1 examines how official COVID-19 mitigation guidance influenced company and organization compliance through the lens of collective emotions and pandemic-induced fear. More precisely, we investigate how message framing and campaign dissemination channels impacted organizational support for official COVID-19 mitigation efforts. In doing so, we try to determine how authorities can manage future pandemic related communication. WP2 examines the economic and social impact of collective emotions and emotional contagions during the COVID-19 pandemic through the use of satellite-based remote sensing data. We expect to see that observed differences in cross-regional and cross-national COVID-19 mitigation compliance are partially attributable to emotional contagions. WP3 delivers an online global early warning platform to identify and track the progress of COVID-19 and future epidemics near real-time. WP3 will be prioritized, and we will deliver a pilot by the end of 2020. This project is led by Prof. Dr. Charlotta Sirén from the University of St.Gallen, who is joined by Prof. Dr. Joakim Wincent, Prof. Dr. Dietmar Grichnik, and Michael Hudecheck from the University of St.Gallen. The main international project partner is Prof. Dr. Gerard George from Singapore Management University. The members of our research team have several decades of combined experience and an outstanding track record of publishing in leading academic journals. The research project will fund one Ph.D. candidate (100%), one Post Doc. (50%), and associated analytical equipment and infrastructure. The total budget for the project is CHF 280.745.