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Novel insights into views towards H1N1 during the 2009 Pandemic: a thematic analysis of Twitter data

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Wasim Ahmed

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This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Wiley-Blackwell, 2018.

For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.


Abstract

BackgroundInfectious disease outbreaks have the potential to cause a high number of fatalities and are a very serious public health risk.ObjectivesOur aim was to utilise an indepth method to study a period of time where the H1N1 Pandemic of 2009 was at its peak.MethodsA data set of n = 214 784 tweets was retrieved and filtered, and the method of thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.ResultsEight key themes emerged from the analysis of data: emotion and feeling, health related information, general commentary and resources, media and health organisations, politics, country of origin, food, and humour and/or sarcasm.DiscussionA major novel finding was that due to the name ‘swine flu’, Twitter users had the belief that pigs and pork could host and/or transmit the virus. Our paper also considered the methodological implications for the wider field of library and information science as well as specific implications for health information and library workers.ConclusionsNovel insights were derived on how users communicate about disease outbreaks on social media platforms. Our study also provides an innovative methodological contribution because it was found that by utilising an indepth method it was possible to extract greater insight into user communication.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Ahmed W, Bath PA, Sbaffi L, Demartini G

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Health Information and Libraries Journal

Year: 2018

Volume: 36

Issue: 1

Pages: 60-72

Print publication date: 01/03/2019

Online publication date: 20/01/2019

Acceptance date: 05/12/2018

Date deposited: 01/07/2019

ISSN (print): 1471-1834

ISSN (electronic): 1471-1842

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12247

DOI: 10.1111/hir.12247


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