| Title |
Zika in Twitter: Temporal Variations of Locations, Actors, and Concepts
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, April 2017
|
| DOI | 10.2196/publichealth.6925 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Anthony Stefanidis, Emily Vraga, Georgios Lamprianidis, Jacek Radzikowski, Paul L Delamater, Kathryn H Jacobsen, Dieter Pfoser, Arie Croitoru, Andrew Crooks |
| Abstract |
The recent Zika outbreak witnessed the disease evolving from a regional health concern to a global epidemic. During this process, different communities across the globe became involved in Twitter, discussing the disease and key issues associated with it. This paper presents a study of this discussion in Twitter, at the nexus of location, actors, and concepts. Our objective in this study was to demonstrate the significance of 3 types of events: location related, actor related, and concept related, for understanding how a public health emergency of international concern plays out in social media, and Twitter in particular. Accordingly, the study contributes to research efforts toward gaining insights on the mechanisms that drive participation, contributions, and interaction in this social media platform during a disease outbreak. We collected 6,249,626 tweets referring to the Zika outbreak over a period of 12 weeks early in the outbreak (December 2015 through March 2016). We analyzed this data corpus in terms of its geographical footprint, the actors participating in the discourse, and emerging concepts associated with the issue. Data were visualized and evaluated with spatiotemporal and network analysis tools to capture the evolution of interest on the topic and to reveal connections between locations, actors, and concepts in the form of interaction networks. The spatiotemporal analysis of Twitter contributions reflects the spread of interest in Zika from its original hotspot in South America to North America and then across the globe. The Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization had a prominent presence in social media discussions. Tweets about pregnancy and abortion increased as more information about this emerging infectious disease was presented to the public and public figures became involved in this. The results of this study show the utility of analyzing temporal variations in the analytic triad of locations, actors, and concepts. This contributes to advancing our understanding of social media discourse during a public health emergency of international concern. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 25 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 8 | 32% |
| Australia | 2 | 8% |
| United Kingdom | 1 | 4% |
| Spain | 1 | 4% |
| Hong Kong | 1 | 4% |
| Mexico | 1 | 4% |
| Switzerland | 1 | 4% |
| Unknown | 10 | 40% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 11 | 44% |
| Scientists | 10 | 40% |
| Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) | 4 | 16% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 91 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 1 | 1% |
| Australia | 1 | 1% |
| Unknown | 89 | 98% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 17 | 19% |
| Student > Master | 13 | 14% |
| Researcher | 11 | 12% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 8 | 9% |
| Student > Bachelor | 8 | 9% |
| Other | 19 | 21% |
| Unknown | 15 | 16% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Medicine and Dentistry | 16 | 18% |
| Computer Science | 16 | 18% |
| Social Sciences | 12 | 13% |
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 4 | 4% |
| Engineering | 4 | 4% |
| Other | 22 | 24% |
| Unknown | 17 | 19% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 25. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 27 February 2020.
All research outputs
#1,445,041
of 24,544,893 outputs
Outputs from JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
#108
of 1,215 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#28,366
of 314,636 outputs
Outputs of similar age from JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
#3
of 23 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 24,544,893 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 94th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,215 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.5. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 314,636 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 90% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 23 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its contemporaries.