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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Wasim Ahmed
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of a conference proceedings (inc. abstract) that has been published in its final definitive form by Association for Computing Machinery, 2018.
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This paper presents an in-depth qualitative analysis of n=13,373 tweets that relate to the peak of the Swine Flu outbreak of 2009, and the Ebola outbreak of 2014. Tweets were analysed using thematic analysis and a number of themes and sub-themes were identified. The results were brought together in an abstraction phase and the commonalities between the cases were studied. An interesting similarity which emerged was the rate at which Twitter users expressed intense fear and panic akin to that of the sociological concept of “moral panic”. Moreover, a number of discussions were found to emerge which were not reported in previous literature. Our study is the largest in-depth analysis of tweets on infectious diseases. Our results will inform public health strategies for future infectious disease outbreaks. Future work will seek to conduct further comparisons and explore relevant health theory.
Author(s): Ahmed W, Bath P, Sbaffi L, Demaerini G
Publication type: Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstract)
Publication status: Published
Conference Name: 9th International Conference on Social Media & Society
Year of Conference: 2018
Pages: 217-221
Online publication date: 20/07/2018
Acceptance date: 16/03/2018
Date deposited: 04/07/2019
Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery
URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/3217804.3217915
DOI: 10.1145/3217804.3217915
Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item
ISBN: 9781450363341