Chinese social media reaction to the MERS-CoV and avian influenza A(H7N9) outbreaks.

ABSTRACT:

Background

As internet and social media use have skyrocketed, epidemiologists have begun to use online data such as Google query data and Twitter trends to track the activity levels of influenza and other infectious diseases. In China, Weibo is an extremely popular microblogging site that is equivalent to Twitter. Capitalizing on the wealth of public opinion data contained in posts on Weibo, this study used Weibo as a measure of the Chinese people's reactions to two different outbreaks: the 2012 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) outbreak, and the 2013 outbreak of human infection of avian influenza A(H7N9) in China.

Methods

Keyword searches were performed in Weibo data collected by The University of Hong Kong's Weiboscope project. Baseline values were de

SUBMITTER: Fung IC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3878123 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature