Pandemics in the Age of Twitter: Content Analysis of Tweets during the 2009 H1N1 Outbreak

Cynthia Chew and Gunther Eysenbach

PLOS ONE, 2010, vol. 5, issue 11, 1-13

Abstract: Background: Surveys are popular methods to measure public perceptions in emergencies but can be costly and time consuming. We suggest and evaluate a complementary “infoveillance” approach using Twitter during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. Our study aimed to: 1) monitor the use of the terms “H1N1” versus “swine flu” over time; 2) conduct a content analysis of “tweets”; and 3) validate Twitter as a real-time content, sentiment, and public attention trend-tracking tool. Methodology/Principal Findings: Between May 1 and December 31, 2009, we archived over 2 million Twitter posts containing keywords “swine flu,” “swineflu,” and/or “H1N1.” using Infovigil, an infoveillance system. Tweets using “H1N1” increased from 8.8% to 40.5% (R2 = .788; p

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (75)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0014118 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 14118&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0014118

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0014118

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().