TikTok saw a significant increase in popularity during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in the United States, with a growth of *** percent among 15-25 year old users after the pandemic broke out and people started working and studying primarily from home.

TikTok saw a significant increase in popularity during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in the United Kingdom (UK), with a growth of ** percent among ***** year old users after the pandemic started.

TikTok saw an unprecedented increase in popularity during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in the Nordic region. The largest increase, of up to *** percent was observed among Danish youth. While *** percent of them used TikTik before the COVID-19 outbreak, the corresponding share during the pandemic was ** percent. Overall, TikTok became more popular in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland during the pandemic, regardless of the users’ age.

The rise of TikTok   

TikTok is a Chinese video-sharing social network, initially released in 2018, as Musical.ly. Over the period from 2017 to 2020, the app generated increasingly larger engagement rates, reaching nearly ** million daily active users via iOS as of May 2020 on a global scale. Among the most followed accounts in Norway were the pop duo Marcus & Martinus.

COVID-19 on social media   

As of March 2020, almost all the most popular hashtags on social media in Sweden were related to the coronavirus. In fact, a recent survey showed that especially younger individuals worldwide seemed to rely on social media for updates on the coronavirus that same month . In contrast, the figures were much lower for people aged 55 or older. Nevertheless, social media use generally increased during the pandemic and facilitated the spread of news regarding the coronavirus. In some cases, even false information.

Scientific and moderate exercise is an effective remedy to boost the immune system and minimize the risk of infection in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic period. In this context, social media platforms play an essential role in communicating scientific fitness at home. Based on the integrated analysis of communication, physical geography, and health geography, this article takes short fitness-based videos on TikTok as the research object and comprehensively uses text analysis, mathematical statistics, and spatial analysis to reveal the characteristics of communication elements, fitness preferences, and the spatiotemporal evolution of these short videos, and to explore the communication mechanism and optimization path of short videos. The results show that: (1) the communication information focusing on “fighting against the epidemic and keeping fit at home” is made into short videos by female youth. Through the communication channels mainly composed of texts, pictures, and audio, the communication subjects carry out multilevel interactive communication with the communication objects; (2) fitness preferences are mainly composed of dances, unarmed fitness, and fitness with equipment; (3) from the perspective of time, taking February 20 as the node, the daily number of released short videos shows a trend of “increase before decrease”; from the perspective of space, the distribution is significantly unbalanced across provinces, and the direction is not apparent; and (4) this article explores the communication mechanism and targeted optimization countermeasures of short fitness-based videos on TikTok in China's COVID-19 epidemic period.

USA

Please cite the following paper when using this dataset:

N. Thakur, “Five Years of COVID-19 Discourse on Instagram: A Labeled Instagram Dataset of Over Half a Million Posts for Multilingual Sentiment Analysis”, Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing (MLNLP 2024), Chengdu, China, October 18-20, 2024 (Paper accepted for publication, Preprint available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.03293)

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 served as a catalyst for content creation and dissemination on social media platforms, as such platforms serve as virtual communities where people can connect and communicate with one another seamlessly. While there have been several works related to the mining and analysis of COVID-19-related posts on social media platforms such as Twitter (or X), YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok, there is still limited research that focuses on the public discourse on Instagram in this context. Furthermore, the prior works in this field have only focused on the development and analysis of datasets of Instagram posts published during the first few months of the outbreak. The work presented in this paper aims to address this research gap and presents a novel multilingual dataset of 500,153 Instagram posts about COVID-19 published between January 2020 and September 2024. This dataset contains Instagram posts in 161 different languages. After the development of this dataset, multilingual sentiment analysis was performed using VADER and twitter-xlm-roberta-base-sentiment. This process involved classifying each post as positive, negative, or neutral. The results of sentiment analysis are presented as a separate attribute in this dataset.

For each of these posts, the Post ID, Post Description, Date of publication, language code, full version of the language, and sentiment label are presented as separate attributes in the dataset.

The Instagram posts in this dataset are present in 161 different languages out of which the top 10 languages in terms of frequency are English (343041 posts), Spanish (30220 posts), Hindi (15832 posts), Portuguese (15779 posts), Indonesian (11491 posts), Tamil (9592 posts), Arabic (9416 posts), German (7822 posts), Italian (5162 posts), Turkish (4632 posts)

There are 535,021 distinct hashtags in this dataset with the top 10 hashtags in terms of frequency being #covid19 (169865 posts), #covid (132485 posts), #coronavirus (117518 posts), #covid_19 (104069 posts), #covidtesting (95095 posts), #coronavirusupdates (75439 posts), #corona (39416 posts), #healthcare (38975 posts), #staysafe (36740 posts), #coronavirusoutbreak (34567 posts)

The following is a description of the attributes present in this dataset

• Post ID: Unique ID of each Instagram post
• Post Description: Complete description of each post in the language in which it was originally published
• Date: Date of publication in MM/DD/YYYY format
• Language code: Language code (for example: “en”) that represents the language of the post as detected using the Google Translate API
• Full Language: Full form of the language (for example: “English”) that represents the language of the post as detected using the Google Translate API
• Sentiment: Results of sentiment analysis (using the preprocessed version of each post) where each post was classified as positive, negative, or neutral

Open Research Questions

This dataset is expected to be helpful for the investigation of the following research questions and even beyond:

1. How does sentiment toward COVID-19 vary across different languages?
2. How has public sentiment toward COVID-19 evolved from 2020 to the present?
3. How do cultural differences affect social media discourse about COVID-19 across various languages?
4. How has COVID-19 impacted mental health, as reflected in social media posts across different languages?
5. How effective were public health campaigns in shifting public sentiment in different languages?
6. What patterns of vaccine hesitancy or support are present in different languages?
7. How did geopolitical events influence public sentiment about COVID-19 in multilingual social media discourse?
8. What role does social media discourse play in shaping public behavior toward COVID-19 in different linguistic communities?
9. How does the sentiment of minority or underrepresented languages compare to that of major world languages regarding COVID-19?
10. What insights can be gained by comparing the sentiment of COVID-19 posts in widely spoken languages (e.g., English, Spanish) to those in less common languages?

All the Instagram posts that were collected during this data mining process to develop this dataset were publicly available on Instagram and did not require a user to log in to Instagram to view the same (at the time of writing this paper).

Please cite the following paper when using this dataset: N. Thakur, V. Su, M. Shao, K. Patel, H. Jeong, V. Knieling, and A.Bian “A labelled dataset for sentiment analysis of videos on YouTube, TikTok, and other sources about the 2024 outbreak of measles,” arXiv [cs.CY], 2024. Available: http://arxiv.org/abs/2406.07693 Abstract This dataset contains the data of 4011 videos about the ongoing outbreak of measles published on 264 websites on the internet between January 1, 2024, and May 31, 2024. These websites primarily include YouTube and TikTok, which account for 48.6% and 15.2% of the videos, respectively. The remainder of the websites include Instagram and Facebook as well as the websites of various global and local news organizations. For each of these videos, the URL of the video, title of the post, description of the post, and the date of publication of the video are presented as separate attributes in the dataset. After developing this dataset, sentiment analysis (using VADER), subjectivity analysis (using TextBlob), and fine-grain sentiment analysis (using DistilRoBERTa-base) of the video titles and video descriptions were performed. This included classifying each video title and video description into (i) one of the sentiment classes i.e. positive, negative, or neutral, (ii) one of the subjectivity classes i.e. highly opinionated, neutral opinionated, or least opinionated, and (iii) one of the fine-grain sentiment classes i.e. fear, surprise, joy, sadness, anger, disgust, or neutral. These results are presented as separate attributes in the dataset for the training and testing of machine learning algorithms for performing sentiment analysis or subjectivity analysis in this field as well as for other applications. The paper associated with this dataset (please see the above-mentioned citation) also presents a list of open research questions that may be investigated using this dataset.

Launched first in India after the TikTok ban in August 2020, YouTube Shorts rolled out globally in June 2021. The feature, which is accessible via the YouTube app, reached two billion monthly logged-in users as of July 2023. YouTube has been heavily promoting its short-video format platform since its global launch, including redirecting users automatically to Shorts when the YouTube app is opened and launching the YouTube Shorts Funds to entice creators' participation. In 2022, user and travel vlogger Shangerdanger took the crown for the most popular Short on YouTube, with his video “Diver cracks Egg at 45 ft Deep".

TikTok versus Reels: competitors’ comparison Launched in September 2016 in China as Douyin, TikTok went on to become of the most engaging social media platforms for global users, challenging mainstream social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube in their primary markets such as the United States, Brazil, and Japan. TikTok’s popularity exploded between 2019 and 2020, as the work was experiencing the effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. Reels, Instagram’s in-app short video experience, debuted in 2020 as Facebook (now Meta Platforms) bet on the short-video feature to improve users’ engagement. While videos were an already popular format on Facebook and Instagram, social short videos soon became an even more popular format with users. As of June 2022, the average video viewing rate for Reels on Instagram was 2.54 percent, while for videos was of 1.74 percent as of June 2022.

Content is key: creators drive an entire economy As of July 2022, influencers on TikTok and YouTube generate the largest share of video views, over 90 percent, while content produced by media companies and brands constitute only a smaller part of the video views generated on the two video platforms. As content creators are emerging even more clearly as the backbone of social media marketing and advertising, it is not a surprise that an entire economy devoted to their needs and presence has developed in recent years. In 2022, companies supporting the creators’ economy by offering merchandising services had an annual average revenue of over 500 million U.S. dollars, while companies overseeing subscription services generated approximately 300 million U.S. dollars.

From “get ready with me” videos to reels of “the 7 essentials you need in your purse right now,” and “the latest fashion trends,” young women and teenage girls’ TikTok and Instagram feeds are filled with all the ways they need to better themselves. At first glance, these posts seem harmless; however, seeing video after video of how you need to better your life in unachievable ways leaves the self feeling inadequate.

The beauty industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry that is expected to reach almost $736 billion in global revenue by 2028. Making up more than 20 percent of the entire e-commerce market, the beauty industry has been propelled by the expansion of social media since the COVID-19 Pandemic. Feminist artists like Martha Rosler began critiquing the problems associated with the beauty industry back in the 70s, but the problem of marketing to women has only grown since. Sophisticated algorithms, propelled by watching their users’ every move, project enviable lifestyles through influencers' perfectly lit, clean, and hypnotic videos and posts. Today, the targeted social media ads, influencers promoting products, and videos telling women how to create “the perfect life” cause young women, and even younger girls, to self-objectify.

Through mixed media drawings, I expose the absurdity of the beauty industry propelled by social media by exaggerating the images we are exposed to every day. I juxtapose digital elements of social media against drawn marks that masquerade as beauty products. Oftentimes only fragments of the image are rendered to completion, coinciding with the ways in which women are picked apart and objectified in the media. By mixing figuration and abstraction and calling on feminist theorists, I highlight the internal conflict that arises from the critical self-evaluation that I, and many other young women, have grown accustomed to with the use of the internet and social media.

Julibeth is a Venezuelan preschool teacher who was forced to migrate to Colombia due to hardship. She left behind her husband and two children and now travels between Colombia and Venezuela to bring supplies for her family. This is a text with her own words and a screenshot of funny moments she shares on social media.

This material is part of the Covid Chronicles from the Margins project, funded by The Open University and the International Institute of Social Studies in the Hague. The project aims to highlight the impact of the pandemic on refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants.

The royalty-free music market, encompassing no copyright music, is experiencing robust growth, driven by the increasing demand for high-quality audio across various sectors. The market's expansion is fueled by the proliferation of online video content creation, particularly on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, where creators need readily available and legally sound background music. This demand is further amplified by the rise of podcasting, online advertising, and corporate video productions, all of which require cost-effective and legally compliant audio solutions. The market is segmented by application (personal, commercial, and other) and availability (commercially usable and not commercially available), reflecting the diverse needs of various user groups. While established players like Adobe and Epidemic Sound dominate, the market also features a significant number of smaller players catering to niche needs, fostering competition and innovation. We estimate the 2025 market size to be approximately $2.5 billion, based on observed growth trends in related digital media sectors, with a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 15% projected through 2033. This growth trajectory is anticipated to continue as the demand for accessible and affordable high-quality audio increases across a broadening spectrum of digital media platforms and professional applications. The competitive landscape is characterized by both large established companies with extensive catalogs and numerous smaller independent creators offering niche royalty-free music libraries. This creates a diverse ecosystem where users can find tracks ranging from widely applicable general-purpose music to highly specific genres and moods. Geographic distribution shows strong growth across all regions, with North America and Europe currently holding the largest market share, though Asia-Pacific is projected to experience significant growth in the coming years due to its expanding digital media consumption and content creation. Restraints on market growth primarily involve navigating copyright complexities and ensuring consistent quality control across diverse offerings. Future growth hinges on ongoing technological advancements in music creation and distribution, further expansion of online video content platforms, and increasing awareness of the legal implications of using copyrighted music.

The royalty-free music market is experiencing robust growth, driven by the increasing demand for high-quality audio across various digital platforms and content creation avenues. The market's expansion is fueled by several key factors. The rise of video content creation on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram necessitates readily available and affordable background music, making royalty-free options highly attractive. Furthermore, the ease of access through online marketplaces and subscription models has significantly streamlined the licensing process, removing a major barrier for content creators. The ongoing evolution of digital media and the increasing professionalization of online content are further boosting market expansion. A projected Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 15% from 2025 to 2033 suggests a significant upward trajectory, with the market size expected to reach approximately $2.5 billion by 2033, from an estimated $1.2 billion in 2025. This growth is expected across various segments, including music for advertising, film, television, and online video. Despite the positive outlook, market restraints include copyright infringement concerns, pricing strategies of different platforms, and the need to maintain consistent quality and originality within the vast library of available music. The industry is responding to these challenges through improved copyright management systems, diverse pricing tiers catering to different user needs, and investment in innovative music creation and search technologies. Competitive landscape analysis reveals several major players—Epidemic Sound, Audio Network, Getty Images, and others—each employing various strategies to differentiate their offerings. The focus is on expanding libraries, offering superior search functionalities, and building robust customer support systems. Regional variations in market penetration and growth rates are expected, with North America and Europe maintaining significant market shares, though other regions will experience notable growth owing to rising internet penetration and increasing digital content consumption.

During a study conducted in march 2020 among global influencers, it was found that in response to the coronavirus outbreak 23 percent of them started hosting livestreams to accommodate social distancing and keep in contact with their audiences. What is more, some 24 percent of influencers newly joined TikTok for the in order to profit from the growing popularity of video in these circumstances.

Mixed-effects model predicting the valence of video content created by older adults on TikTok.

The advertising music market, encompassing original and adapted music for various industries, is poised for substantial growth. The market size in 2025 is estimated at $2053 million, projecting a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 9.2% from 2025 to 2033. This robust expansion is fueled by several key drivers. The increasing adoption of digital advertising and streaming platforms necessitates high-quality audio content, driving demand for professional advertising songs. Furthermore, brands are increasingly leveraging music to enhance brand identity and emotional connection with consumers, making music an integral component of marketing strategies. Growth within segments like the electronics and automotive industries, which utilize music extensively in their advertising campaigns, will also significantly contribute to overall market expansion. The rise of short-form video platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels further fuels this demand, requiring a constant stream of fresh, engaging musical scores. While potential restraints such as copyright issues and fluctuating royalty rates exist, the overall positive industry momentum suggests consistent growth throughout the forecast period. The geographical distribution of the market reveals significant regional variations. North America and Europe, with their mature advertising and media landscapes, are currently leading the market, but the Asia-Pacific region, particularly China and India, shows immense potential for future growth. This is primarily due to rapidly expanding digital economies and increasing advertising budgets. The segmentation by music type highlights the preference for original compositions, reflecting a growing need for unique branding and avoidance of copyright complications. However, the adapted music segment remains substantial, offering cost-effective options for smaller businesses. Key players like Epidemic Sound, Universal Production Music, and Music Gateway are well-positioned to capitalize on this growth, competing on factors such as music library size, licensing flexibility, and technological integration. Competition is intense, driven by both established players and innovative startups offering niche services and technological advancements.

This renaking provided by Airnow PLC graph shows the most downloaded apps on Apple app store in France between ******** and *******, 2020 (thousands of downloads). Plato came in first with ***** thousand downloads during the confinement period after the coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak in France, followed by ZOOM Cloud Meetings with ***** thousand downoads. Houseparty ranked in third place with ***** thousands and Tik Tok occupied the fourth place with ** thousand downloads that week. From the same source, a ranking of the most downloaded apps on the Google Play Store is available.

Introduction

YouTube Creator Statistics: The overall Creator Economy rose to fame since the COVID-19 pandemic era, 4 years ago. When every other person was stuck in their home and scrolling through social media. It is expected that by 2027, this sector will reach $480 billion, and it has no signs of slowing down. Using the internet, many people are creating a source of income by making videos and uploading them to video content platforms, such as TikTok, Moj, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc.

YouTube is one of the video content platforms. It was launched on 14 February 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. YouTube helped content creators around the world earn passive income by making videos and uploading them on the platform. For some creators, YouTube acts as the primary source of income. You’ll understand more about YouTube Creator Statistics by the data provided below.

Description of video features and demographics of TikTok videos uploaded by older adults by valence of content a.

The report provides a snapshot of the social media usage trends amongst online Canadian adults based on an online survey of 1500 participants. Canada continues to be one of the most connected countries in the world. An overwhelming majority of online Canadian adults (94%) have an account on at least one social media platform. However, the 2022 survey results show that the COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in some changes in how and where Canadians are spending their time on social media. Dominant platforms such as Facebook, messaging apps and YouTube are still on top but are losing ground to newer platforms such as TikTok and more niche platforms such as Reddit and Twitch.

According to a survey on online shopping in China, the usage of live streaming e-commerce grew by 6.3 percent among respondents during the COVID-19 outbreak. Meanwhile, shopping via short videos increased by 2.6 percent compared to before the pandemic. Douyin (known as Tik Tok globally) and Kuaishou were two popular short video platforms among Chinese online shoppers.