Identifying Protective Health Behaviors on Twitter: Observational Study of Travel Advisories and Zika Virus.

ABSTRACT:

Background

An estimated 3.9 billion individuals live in a location endemic for common mosquito-borne diseases. The emergence of Zika virus in South America in 2015 marked the largest known Zika outbreak and caused hundreds of thousands of infections. Internet data have shown promise in identifying human behaviors relevant for tracking and understanding other diseases.

Objective

Using Twitter posts regarding the 2015-16 Zika virus outbreak, we sought to identify and describe considerations and self-disclosures of a specific behavior change relevant to the spread of disease-travel cancellation. If this type of behavior is identifiable in Twitter, this approach may provide an additional source of data for disease modeling.

Methods

We combined keyword filtering and machin

SUBMITTER: Daughton AR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6535980 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature