Ebola on social media shows some revealing insights

Ebola.  Just the word by itself instills fear.  But in some corners of our shared planet it presents itself as an all too real horror that invades communities, neighborhoods, and families.  As this crisis has been unfolding, we at Symplur have been following the same news reports that all of you have with regards to the spread of this disease, the increasing death toll, and concerns of containment. We’ve also been following Ebola through the unique lens that healthcare social media provides.  On July 28, 2014 the current Ebola outbreak hit the mainstream news in the U.S.  That morning Symplur began tracking it on Twitter via several hashtags including #Ebola #EbolaOutbreak, #EbolaVirus and #EbolaWatch. Current trends on the topic of Ebola on social media For starters, let’s look at some of the basic facts for the 54 days studied from Jul 28 – Sep 19, 2014 … 1,787,875 tweets 600,910 unique users tweeting Most active day had 89,015 tweets (Aug 8, 2014) During this time, our analysis has uncovered some obvious trends in the social media discussion on Ebola.  Most notably, we’ve noticed that Ebola on social media has not mimicked the real-world trend of this virus itself.  As the death toll has risen, the public discussion has waned. Why is that? Today’s media includes stories from around the world, but our ability to ingest all these new stories remains limited by both time and sheer brain-power.  Consequently, the media itself decides which stories to tell, ...
Source: Fox ePractice - Category: Health Managers Authors: Tags: Connecting the dots in healthcare social media Newsletter Ebola healthcare social media analytics Source Type: blogs