The Use of Twitter to Track Levels of Disease Activity and Public Concern in the U.S. during the Influenza A H1N1 Pandemic

Alessio Signorini; Alberto Maria Segre; Philip M Polgreen

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0019467

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The Use of Twitter to Track Levels of Disease Activity and Public Concern in the U.S. during the Influenza A H1N1 Pandemic

Journal article

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Peer reviewed

The Use of Twitter to Track Levels of Disease Activity and Public Concern in the U.S. during the Influenza A H1N1 Pandemic

Alessio Signorini, Alberto Maria Segre and Philip M Polgreen

PloS one, Vol.6(5), pp.e19467-e19467

05/04/2011

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0019467

PMCID: PMC3087759

PMID: 21573238

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Abstract

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its millions of users to send and read each other's “tweets,” or short, 140-character messages. The service has more than 190 million registered users and processes about 55 million tweets per day. Useful information about news and geopolitical events lies embedded in the Twitter stream, which embodies, in the aggregate, Twitter users' perspectives and reactions to current events. By virtue of sheer volume, content embedded in the Twitter stream may be useful for tracking or even forecasting behavior if it can be extracted in an efficient manner. In this study, we examine the use of information embedded in the Twitter stream to (1) track rapidly-evolving public sentiment with respect to H1N1 or swine flu, and (2) track and measure actual disease activity. We also show that Twitter can be used as a measure of public interest or concern about health-related events. Our results show that estimates of influenza-like illness derived from Twitter chatter accurately track reported disease levels.

Computer Science

Medicine

Details

Title: Subtitle: The Use of Twitter to Track Levels of Disease Activity and Public Concern in the U.S. during the Influenza A H1N1 Pandemic
Creators: Alessio Signorini - University of Iowa
Alberto Maria Segre - University of Iowa
Philip M Polgreen - University of Iowa
Resource Type: Journal article
Publication Details: PloS one, Vol.6(5), pp.e19467-e19467
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0019467
PMID: 21573238
PMCID: PMC3087759
NLM abbreviation: PLoS One
ISSN: 1932-6203
eISSN: 1932-6203
Publisher: Public Library of Science
Alternative title: Tracking Influenza Activity with Twitter
Language: English
Date published: 05/04/2011
Academic Unit: Infectious Diseases; Epidemiology; Nursing; Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center; Injury Prevention Research Center; Computer Science; Internal Medicine
Record Identifier: 9984259404202771

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