scholarly journals Identifying Influential Factors in the Discussion Dynamics of Emerging Health Issues on Social Media: Computational Study

10.2196/17175 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. e17175
Author(s):  
Lida Safarnejad ◽  
Qian Xu ◽  
Yaorong Ge ◽  
Arunkumar Bagavathi ◽  
Siddharth Krishnan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Time Series ◽  
Real World ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
Influential Users

Background Social media has become a major resource for observing and understanding public opinions using infodemiology and infoveillance methods, especially during emergencies such as disease outbreaks. For public health agencies, understanding the driving forces of web-based discussions will help deliver more effective and efficient information to general users on social media and the web. Objective The study aimed to identify the major contributors that drove overall Zika-related tweeting dynamics during the 2016 epidemic. In total, 3 hypothetical drivers were proposed: (1) the underlying Zika epidemic quantified as a time series of case counts; (2) sporadic but critical real-world events such as the 2016 Rio Olympics and World Health Organization’s Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) announcement, and (3) a few influential users’ tweeting activities. Methods All tweets and retweets (RTs) containing the keyword Zika posted in 2016 were collected via the Gnip application programming interface (API). We developed an analytical pipeline, EventPeriscope, to identify co-occurring trending events with Zika and quantify the strength of these events. We also retrieved Zika case data and identified the top influencers of the Zika discussion on Twitter. The influence of 3 potential drivers was examined via a multivariate time series analysis, signal processing, a content analysis, and text mining techniques. Results Zika-related tweeting dynamics were not significantly correlated with the underlying Zika epidemic in the United States in any of the four quarters in 2016 nor in the entire year. Instead, peaks of Zika-related tweeting activity were strongly associated with a few critical real-world events, both planned, such as the Rio Olympics, and unplanned, such as the PHEIC announcement. The Rio Olympics was mentioned in >15% of all Zika-related tweets and PHEIC occurred in 27% of Zika-related tweets around their respective peaks. In addition, the overall tweeting dynamics of the top 100 most actively tweeting users on the Zika topic, the top 100 users receiving most RTs, and the top 100 users mentioned were the most highly correlated to and preceded the overall tweeting dynamics, making these groups of users the potential drivers of tweeting dynamics. The top 100 users who retweeted the most were not critical in driving the overall tweeting dynamics. There were very few overlaps among these different groups of potentially influential users. Conclusions Using our proposed analytical workflow, EventPeriscope, we identified that Zika discussion dynamics on Twitter were decoupled from the actual disease epidemic in the United States but were closely related to and highly influenced by certain sporadic real-world events as well as by a few influential users. This study provided a methodology framework and insights to better understand the driving forces of web-based public discourse during health emergencies. Therefore, health agencies could deliver more effective and efficient web-based communications in emerging crises.

scholarly journals Identifying Influential Factors in the Discussion Dynamics of Emerging Health Issues on Social Media: Computational Study (Preprint)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lida Safarnejad ◽  
Qian Xu ◽  
Yaorong Ge ◽  
Arunkumar Bagavathi ◽  
Siddharth Krishnan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Time Series ◽  
Real World ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
Influential Users

BACKGROUND Social media has become a major resource for observing and understanding public opinions using infodemiology and infoveillance methods, especially during emergencies such as disease outbreaks. For public health agencies, understanding the driving forces of web-based discussions will help deliver more effective and efficient information to general users on social media and the web. OBJECTIVE The study aimed to identify the major contributors that drove overall Zika-related tweeting dynamics during the 2016 epidemic. In total, 3 hypothetical drivers were proposed: (1) the underlying Zika epidemic quantified as a time series of case counts; (2) sporadic but critical real-world events such as the 2016 Rio Olympics and World Health Organization’s Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) announcement, and (3) a few influential users’ tweeting activities. METHODS All tweets and retweets (RTs) containing the keyword Zika posted in 2016 were collected via the Gnip application programming interface (API). We developed an analytical pipeline, EventPeriscope, to identify co-occurring trending events with Zika and quantify the strength of these events. We also retrieved Zika case data and identified the top influencers of the Zika discussion on Twitter. The influence of 3 potential drivers was examined via a multivariate time series analysis, signal processing, a content analysis, and text mining techniques. RESULTS Zika-related tweeting dynamics were not significantly correlated with the underlying Zika epidemic in the United States in any of the four quarters in 2016 nor in the entire year. Instead, peaks of Zika-related tweeting activity were strongly associated with a few critical real-world events, both planned, such as the Rio Olympics, and unplanned, such as the PHEIC announcement. The Rio Olympics was mentioned in >15% of all Zika-related tweets and PHEIC occurred in 27% of Zika-related tweets around their respective peaks. In addition, the overall tweeting dynamics of the top 100 most actively tweeting users on the Zika topic, the top 100 users receiving most RTs, and the top 100 users mentioned were the most highly correlated to and preceded the overall tweeting dynamics, making these groups of users the potential drivers of tweeting dynamics. The top 100 users who retweeted the most were not critical in driving the overall tweeting dynamics. There were very few overlaps among these different groups of potentially influential users. CONCLUSIONS Using our proposed analytical workflow, EventPeriscope, we identified that Zika discussion dynamics on Twitter were decoupled from the actual disease epidemic in the United States but were closely related to and highly influenced by certain sporadic real-world events as well as by a few influential users. This study provided a methodology framework and insights to better understand the driving forces of web-based public discourse during health emergencies. Therefore, health agencies could deliver more effective and efficient web-based communications in emerging crises.

scholarly journals International Perspectives on COVID-19 Communication Ecologies: Public Health Agencies’ Online Communication in Italy, Sweden, and the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 000276422199283
Author(s):  
Serena Tagliacozzo ◽  
Frederike Albrecht ◽  
N. Emel Ganapati
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
The United States ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
Communication Ecology ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
National Public Health

Communicating during a crisis can be challenging for public agencies as their communication ecology becomes increasingly complex while the need for fast and reliable public communication remains high. Using the lens of communication ecology, this study examines the online communication of national public health agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy, Sweden, and the United States. Based on content analysis of Twitter data ( n = 856) and agency press releases ( n = 95), this article investigates two main questions: (1) How, and to what extent, did national public health agencies coordinate their online communication with other agencies and organizations? (2) How was online communication from the agencies diversified in terms of targeting specific organizations and social groups? Our findings indicate that public health agencies relied heavily on internal scientific expertise and predominately coordinated their communication efforts with national government agencies. Furthermore, our analysis reveals that agencies in each country differed in how they diversify information; however, all agencies provided tailored information to at least some organizations and social groups. Across the three countries, information tailored for several vulnerable groups (e.g., pregnant women, people with disabilities, immigrants, and homeless populations) was largely absent, which may contribute to negative consequences for these groups.

Biodefense and Emergency Use Authorization: Different Originations, Purposes, and Evolutionary Paths of Institutions in the United States and South Korea

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
HyunJung Kim
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Post Exposure Prophylaxis ◽  
Meso Level ◽  
Public Health Emergencies ◽  
Level Analysis

Abstract Background: Historical institutionalism (HI) determines that institutions have been transformed by a pattern of punctuated evolution due to exogenous shocks. Although scholars frequently emphasize the role of agency - endogenous factors – when it comes to institutional changes, but the HI analytic narratives still remain in the meso-level analysis in the context of structure and agency. This article provides domestic and policy-level accounts of where biodefense institutions of the United States and South Korea come from, seeing through emergency-use-authorization (EUA) policy, and how the EUA policies have evolved by employing the policy-learning concepts through the Event-related Policy Change Model. Results: By employing the Birkland’s model, this article complements the limitation of the meso-level analysis in addressing that the 2001 Amerithrax and the 2015 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak rooted originations and purposes of the biodefense respectively. Since the crisis, a new post-crisis agenda in society contributed to establishing new domestic coalition, which begin to act as endogenous driving forces that institutionalize new biodefense institutions and even reinforce them through path dependent way when the institutions evolved. Therefore, EUA policy cores (Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) in the United States and Non-Pharmaceutical Intervention (NPI) in South Korea keep strengthened during the policy revisions. Conclusions: The United States and South Korea have different originations and purposes of biodefense, which are institutions evolving through self-reinforce dependent way based on the lessons learned from past crises. In sum, under the homeland security biodefense institution, the US EUA focuses on the development of specialized, unlicensed PEP in response to public health emergencies; on the other hand, under the disease containment-centric biodefense institution, the Korean EUA is specialized to conduct NPI missions in response to public health emergencies.

Case Studies and Caveats

2019 ◽  
pp. 83-101
Author(s):  
Jonathan H. Marks
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Framing Effects ◽  
Noncommunicable Diseases ◽  
Systemic Effects ◽  
Public Health Agencies ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
Food And Beverage

This chapter outlines several partnership case studies involving the food and beverage sector, especially soda companies. These case studies are drawn from the United States, Britain, and India. The analysis highlights certain problematic features—for example, use of corporate logos, trademarks, and color schemes that are likely to promote consumption of products that are exacerbating obesity and diet-related noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). But, more fundamentally, the analysis ties the case studies to the broader systemic effects discussed in the preceding chapters. These include framing effects, agenda distortion, and impacts on the integrity of and trust in public health agencies.

scholarly journals Dynamics of Health Agency Response and Public Engagement in Public Health Emergency: A Case Study of CDC Tweeting Patterns During the 2016 Zika Epidemic (Preprint)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shi Chen ◽  
Qian Xu ◽  
John Buchenberger ◽  
Arunkumar Bagavathi ◽  
Gabriel Fair ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Time Series ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Moving Average ◽  
Multivariate Time Series ◽  
Health Agency ◽  
The United States ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Moving Average Model

BACKGROUND Social media have been increasingly adopted by health agencies to disseminate information, interact with the public, and understand public opinion. Among them, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is one of the first US government health agencies to adopt social media during health emergencies and crisis. It had been active on Twitter during the 2016 Zika epidemic that caused 5168 domestic noncongenital cases in the United States. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to quantify the temporal variabilities in CDC’s tweeting activities throughout the Zika epidemic, public engagement defined as retweeting and replying, and Zika case counts. It then compares the patterns of these 3 datasets to identify possible discrepancy among domestic Zika case counts, CDC’s response on Twitter, and public engagement in this topic. METHODS All of the CDC-initiated tweets published in 2016 with corresponding retweets and replies were collected from 67 CDC–associated Twitter accounts. Both univariate and multivariate time series analyses were performed in each quarter of 2016 for domestic Zika case counts, CDC tweeting activities, and public engagement in the CDC-initiated tweets. RESULTS CDC sent out >84.0% (5130/6104) of its Zika tweets in the first quarter of 2016 when Zika case counts were low in the 50 US states and territories (only 560/5168, 10.8% cases and 662/38,885, 1.70% cases, respectively). While Zika case counts increased dramatically in the second and third quarters, CDC efforts on Twitter substantially decreased. The time series of public engagement in the CDC-initiated tweets generally differed among quarters and from that of original CDC tweets based on autoregressive integrated moving average model results. Both original CDC tweets and public engagement had the highest mutual information with Zika case counts in the second quarter. Furthermore, public engagement in the original CDC tweets was substantially correlated with and preceded actual Zika case counts. CONCLUSIONS Considerable discrepancies existed among CDC’s original tweets regarding Zika, public engagement in these tweets, and actual Zika epidemic. The patterns of these discrepancies also varied between different quarters in 2016. CDC was much more active in the early warning of Zika, especially in the first quarter of 2016. Public engagement in CDC’s original tweets served as a more prominent predictor of actual Zika epidemic than the number of CDC’s original tweets later in the year.

scholarly journals Exploring the Role of Media Sources on COVID-19–Related Discrimination Experiences and Concerns Among Asian People in the United States: Cross-Sectional Survey Study (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nan Yu ◽  
Shuya Pan ◽  
Chia-chen Yang ◽  
Jiun-Yi Tsai
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Racial Biases ◽  
Asian People

BACKGROUND Media coverage and scholarly research have reported that Asian people who reside in the United States have been the targets of racially motivated incidents during the COVID-19 pandemic. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to examine the types of discrimination and worries experienced by Asians and Asian Americans living in the United States during the pandemic, as well as factors that were associated with everyday discrimination experience and concerns about future discrimination that the Asian community may face. METHODS A cross-sectional online survey was conducted. A total of 235 people who identified themselves as Asian or Asian American and resided in the United States completed the questionnaire. RESULTS Our study suggested that up to a third of Asians surveyed had experienced some type of discrimination. Pooling the responses “very often,” “often,” and “sometimes,” the percentages for each experienced discrimination type ranged between 14%-34%. In total, 49%-58% of respondents expressed concerns about discrimination in the future. The most frequently experienced discrimination types, as indicated by responses “very often” and “often,” were “people act as if they think you are dangerous” (25/235, 11%) and “being treated with less courtesy or respect” (24/235, 10%). About 14% (32/235) of individuals reported very often, often, or sometimes being threatened or harassed. In addition, social media use was significantly associated with a higher likelihood of experiencing discrimination (β=.18, <i>P</i>=.01) and having concerns about future episodes of discrimination the community may face (β=.20, <i>P</i>=.005). Use of print media was also positively associated with experiencing discrimination (β=.31, <i>P</i>&lt;.001). CONCLUSIONS Our study provided important empirical evidence regarding the various types of discrimination Asians residing in the United States experienced or worried about during the COVID-19 pandemic. The relationship between media sources and the perception of racial biases in this group was also identified. We noted the role of social media in reinforcing the perception of discrimination experience and concerns about future discrimination among Asians during this outbreak. Our results indicate several practical implications for public health agencies. To reduce discrimination against Asians during the pandemic, official sources and public health professionals should be cognizant of the possible impacts of stigmatizing cues in media reports on activating racial biases. Furthermore, Asians or Asian Americans could also be informed that using social media to obtain COVID-19 information is associated with an increase in concerns about future discrimination, and thus they may consider approaching this media source with caution.

Social Media and other Web 2.0 Technologies as Communication Channels in a Cross-Cultural, Web-Based Professional Communication Project

2013 ◽  
pp. 256-272
Author(s):  
Pavel Zemliansky ◽  
Olena Goroshko
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Communication Channels ◽  
The United States ◽  
Professional Communication ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
Project Participants

In recent years, cross-national web-based teaching projects have become very popular in many fields. During such projects, participants from different countries work together on collaborative tasks. Communications among project participants take place over the Internet, including via social media. In this chapter, the author reports the results of social media use in one such project, which brought together students from the United States and Ukraine. A pre and post project survey taken by the participants demonstrate the main opportunities and challenges afforded by social media to educators. The reporting and analysis of the survey results are preceded by a review of relevant literature, which contextualizes our findings.

Determining the Level of Interest in a Professional Association for Social Marketing in the United States: Results of a National Survey

2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Marshall ◽  
Beth Sundstrom
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Social Marketing ◽  
National Survey ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Professional Association ◽  
Professional Organization ◽  
Work Setting ◽  
Web Based

Recent proposals about a professional organization for social marketing in public health led to a web-based survey of 430 anonymous respondents. The analysis explored the various characteristics of respondents (e.g., career status, experience, and work setting) in addition to the kind of organization they prefer, its benefits, and membership fees. The results indicate strong support for a professional organization and encourage further developmental efforts.

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