Marburg Virus Outbreak and a New Conspiracy Theory: Dataset of Search Interests from 216 Regions

Please cite the following paper when using this dataset:

N. Thakur, S. Cui, K. A. Patel, N. Azizi, V. Knieling, C. Han, A. Poon, and R. Shah, “Marburg Virus Outbreak and a New Conspiracy Theory: Findings from a Comprehensive Analysis and Forecasting of Web Behavior,” Journal of Computation, Vol. 11, Issue. 11, Article. 234, Nov. 2023, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/computation11110234

Abstract

During virus outbreaks in the recent past, web behavior mining, modeling, and analysis have served as means to examine, explore, interpret, assess, and forecast the worldwide perception, readiness, reactions, and response linked to these virus outbreaks. The recent outbreak of the Marburg Virus disease (MVD), the high fatality rate of MVD, and the conspiracy theory linking the FEMA alert signal in the United States on 4 October 2023 with MVD and a zombie outbreak, resulted in a diverse range of reactions in the general public which has transpired in a surge in web behavior in this context. This resulted in “Marburg Virus” featuring in the list of the top trending topics on Twitter on 3 October 2023, and “Emergency Alert System” and “Zombie” featuring in the list of top trending topics on Twitter on 4 October 2023. So, this dataset presents the search interests related to MVD and this conspiracy theory originating from 216 regions.