The Ebola epidemic on Twitter: challenges for health informatics (original) (raw)
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Social media in Ebola outbreak
Epidemiology and Infection, 2016
SUMMARYThe West African 2014 Ebola outbreak has highlighted the need for a better information network. Hybrid information networks, an integration of both hierarchical and formalized command control-driven and community-based, orad hocemerging networks, could assist in improving public health responses. By filling the missing gaps with social media use, the public health response could be more proactive rather than reactive in responding to such an outbreak of global concern. This article provides a review of the current social media use specifically in this outbreak by systematically collecting data from ProQuest Newsstand, Dow Jones Factiva, Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED) as well as Google Trends. The period studied is from 19 March 2014 (first request for information on ProMED) to 15 October 2014, a total of 31 weeks. The term ‘Ebola’ was used in the search for media reports. The outcome of the review shows positive results for social media use in effective sur...
Ebola virus disease and social media: A systematic review
American Journal of Infection Control, 2016
We systematically reviewed existing research pertinent to Ebola virus disease and social media, especially to identify the research questions and the methods used to collect and analyze social media. Methods: We searched 6 databases for research articles pertinent to Ebola virus disease and social media. We extracted the data using a standardized form. We evaluated the quality of the included articles. Results: Twelve articles were included in the main analysis: 7 from Twitter with 1 also including Weibo, 1 from Facebook, 3 from YouTube, and 1 from Instagram and Flickr. All the studies were cross-sectional. Eleven of the 12 articles studied ≥ 1of these 3 elements of social media and their relationships: themes or topics of social media contents, meta-data of social media posts (such as frequency of original posts and reposts, and impressions) and characteristics of the social media accounts that made these posts (such as whether they are individuals or institutions). One article studied how news videos influenced Twitter traffic. Twitter content analysis methods included text mining (n = 3) and manual coding (n = 1). Two studies involved mathematical modeling. All 3 YouTube studies and the Instagram/Flickr study used manual coding of videos and images, respectively. Conclusions: Published Ebola virus disease-related social media research focused on Twitter and YouTube. The utility of social media research to public health practitioners is warranted.
2016
Information was critical to the fight against Ebola. Both for responders, who needed detailed and timely data about the disease's spread, and for communities, who needed access to trusted and truthful information with which they could protect themselves and their loved ones. yet, as we now know all too clearly, the technical, institutional, and human systems required to rapidly gather, transmit, analyze, use, and share Ebola-related data frequently were not sophisticated or robust enough to support the response in a timely manner. We must strengthen these systems. This is essential both to keep pace with diseases that spread with the ferocity and velocity of Ebola, and to be more resilient in the face of future threats. Although the focus of this report is the need for strengthened capacity, systems, and use of data, we recognize that this alone is not sufficient. Our hope is that these recommendations are incorporated alongside new knowledge of effective public health interventions, preparedness, and priorities for health system strengthening. Ultimately, our willingness to engage these challenges-on a daily basis and within public health systems-will be the best predictor of our success in stopping similar events. Let us learn from and act upon these lessons to do justice both to those directly affected by Ebola, and to the efforts that ultimately brought to heel one of the most significant health and humanitarian crises of the early 21st century.
Using Twitter for insights into the 2009 swine flu and 2014 Ebola outbreaks
2018
Infectious disease outbreaks are a global public health risk that have the potential to take many lives in a short amount of time. It is important to understand the views and thought processes of the general public to have a better understanding of their perceptions of infectious diseases and how they spread. Social media platforms, originally intended for personal use, have recently been used in academic research for analysing public views and opinions as well as for disease mapping and tracking. Twitter, a widely-used microblogging platform, provides a unique opportunity to study the instant reactions of the public during disease outbreaks. This is because news of such epidemics on Twitter typically generate bursts of tweets. This abstract describes a study that is investigating user views during the peak of the 2009 Swine Flu and the 2014 Ebola outbreaks. Based on Google Trends data, tweets were retrieved from Twitter during a peak in Web search queries. Data were retrieved from ...
Social Media Communication During Disease Outbreaks: Findings and Recommendations
Social Media Use in Crisis and Risk Communication, 2018
The chapter provides recommendations for key communicators' social media use during pandemic threats. Recommendations are based on findings from two sets of case studies during the 2014À2015 outbreak of Ebola in West Africa: the use by authorities in UK and Norway during the 2014À2015 West African Ebola outbreak; and the use by established media in the UK.
Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, 2016
Health threats due to infectious diseases used to be a major public health concerns around the globe till mid of twentieth century when effective public health interventions helped in eradicating a number of infectious diseases around the world. Over the past 15 years, there has been a rise in the number of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases being reported such as the Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2002, HINI in 2009, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2012, Ebola in 2014, and Zika in 2016. These emerging viral infectious diseases have led to serious public health concerns leading to death and causing fear and anxiety among the public. More importantly, at the moment, the prevention and control of viral infectious diseases is difficult due to a lack of effective vaccines. Thus having real-time reporting tools are paramount to alert relevant public health surveillance systems and authorities about taking the right and necessary actions to control and minimize the potential harmful effects of viral infectious diseases. Social media and Internet-based data can play a major role in real-time reporting to empower active public health surveillance systems for controlling and fighting infectious diseases.
#Ebola: Tweeting and Pinning an Epidemic
Atlantic Journal of Communication, 2020
The Ebola outbreak that started in 2014 had infected 28,652 people and taken more than 11,325 lives by spring 2016. Along with this infectious disease pandemic, a pandemic of fear surfaced, especially on social media platforms. Yet little is known about the types of communications, the larger ecological context, and the associated risk perception factors that were present in the social media discussion. This study focused on the social media platforms Twitter and Pinterest and analyzed tweets and pins through the lens of a risk communication theory, the Risk Perception Model, as well as a health behavior theory, the Health Belief Model. Large differences were found in the presence of risk perception variables and health behavior variables between the two platforms, and recommendations for public health practitioners to address fear, anger, and attitudinal biases related to Ebola are included.
Characterizing Ebola Transmission Patterns Based on Internet News Reports
Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, 2015
Detailed information on patient exposure, contact patterns, and discharge status is rarely available in real time from traditional surveillance systems in the context of an emerging infectious disease outbreak. Here, we validate the systematic collection of Internet news reports to characterize epidemiological patterns of Ebola virus disease (EVD) infections during the West African 2014-2015 outbreak. Based on 58 news reports, we analyzed 79 EVD clusters (286 cases) ranging in size from 1 to 33 cases between January 2014 and February 2015 in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. The majority of reported exposures stemmed from contact with family members (57.3%) followed by hospitals (18.2%) and funerals (12.7%). Our data indicate that funeral exposure was significantly more frequent in Sierra Leone (27.3%) followed by Guinea (18.2%) and Liberia (1.8%; χ(2) test; P < .0001). Funeral exposure was the dominant route of transmission until April 2014 (60%) and was replaced with hospit...
Digital Health Communication and Global Public Influence: A Study of the Ebola Epidemic
Journal of Health Communication, 2017
Scientists and health communication professionals expressed frustration over the relationship between misinformation circulating on the Internet and global public perceptions of and responses to the Ebola epidemic originating in West Africa. Using the big data platform Media Cloud, we analyzed all English-language stories about keyword "Ebola"
Digital Surveillance Networks of 2014 Ebola Epidemics and Lessons for COVID-19
Cornell University - arXiv, 2022
What lessons can be learned from the management of the 2014 Ebola outbreaks so that COVOID-19 and the ongoing variant surveillance? In this paper, we argue that effective management of outbreaks, like the West African 2014 Ebola epidemic, is dependent on the use of multi method approach to detect public health preparedness. We are increasingly seeing a delay and disconnect of the transmission of locally situated information to the hierarchical system for making the overall preparedness and response more proactive than reactive for dealing with complex emergencies such as 2014 Ebola. For our COVID-19, we also observed institutional and public behaviour similar to 2014 Ebola response. It is timely to consider whether digital surveillance networks and support systems can be used to bring the formal and community based ad hoc networks required for facilitating the transmission of both strong (i.e., infections, confirmed cases, deaths in hospital or clinic settings) and weak alters from the community. This will allow timely detection of symptoms of isolated suspected cases for making the overall surveillance and intervention strategy far more effective. The use of digital surveillance networks can further contribute to the development of global awareness of complex emergencies such as Ebola for constructing information infrastructure required to develop, monitor and analysis of community based global emergency surveillance in developed and developing countries. In this study, a systematic analysis of the spread during the months of March to October 2014 was performed using data from the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED) and the Factiva database. Using digital surveillance networks, we aim to draw network connections of individuals/groups from a localized to a globalized transmission of Ebola using reported suspected/probable/confirmed cases at different locations around the world. We argue that public health preparedness and response can be strengthened by understanding the social network connections between responders (such as local health authorities) and spreaders (infected individuals and groups).