Content Analysis of a Live CDC Twitter Chat During the 2014 Ebola Outbreak

Crook, Brittani; Glowacki, Elizabeth M.; Suran, Melissa; Harris, Jenine K.; Bernhardt, Jay Michael

doi:10.1080/08824096.2016.1224171

Cited by 39 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…There are also studies that consider that updating too slowly may lead to loss of existing or potential followers (Wang & Zhuang, 2017). Other studies recommend timely use of social media to prevent the spreading of rumors (Crook, Glowacki, Suran, Harris, & Bernhardt, 2016;Fowler, 2017;Gerken et al, 2016). Crisis managing organizations are also recommended to use Twitter for "stealing thunder" and "filling the silence" during crises.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One such reason is the possibility to avoid so-called "information vacuums" during future crises and emergencies by preparing educational messages and materials already before a crisis occurs. Such precrisis work can enable crisis managing organizations to fill potential silences that otherwise might lead to the harmful spread of social media rumors (Crook et al, 2016). A further reason for crisis communication planning that includes social media is that the content and opinions in social media during crises very often undergo "bifurcation" or become "flashpoints of change."…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Lessons for Crisis Communication on Social Media: A Systematic Review of What Research Tells the Practice

Eriksson

2018

International Journal of Strategic Communication

155

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This study analyzes explicit pieces of advice for effective social media crisis communication given by researchers in various subdisciplines of strategic communication. The themes are identified by a systematic content analysis of peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers (n = 104) published between 2004 and 2017. Five overall thematic "lessons" are identified and critically discussed. These are that effective social media crisis communication is about: (1) exploiting social media's potential to create dialogue and to choose the right message, source and timing; (2) performing precrisis work and developing an understanding of the social media logic; (3) using social media monitoring; (4) continuing to prioritize traditional media in crisis situations; and finally, (5) just using social media in strategic crisis communication. These guidelines mainly emerged from quantitative research conducted in the context of the United Stated and on Twitter. There is need for more research focusing on other platforms and other empirical material. There is also a future need for an in-depth methodological discussion of how to further bridge the gap between research and practice on a global scale, and how to develop more evidence-based recommendations for strategic crisis communication practitioners.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lessons for Crisis Communication on Social Media: A Systematic Review of What Research Tells the Practice

Eriksson

2018

International Journal of Strategic Communication

155

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“…SM has become a valuable tool for communication and it has been utilized in many areas, such as education [1], marketing [2], and health communication [3]. For example, in the field of health communication, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) [4] and local health departments in the United States [5] have used Twitter to communicate to people during epidemics. Another example is from the United Kingdom and Norway, where health authorities used Twitter to inform their citizens during the West African Ebola outbreak in 2014 and 2015 [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trustworthy Health-Related Tweets on Social Media in Saudi Arabia: Tweet Metadata Analysis

2019

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BackgroundSocial media platforms play a vital role in the dissemination of health information. However, evidence suggests that a high proportion of Twitter posts (ie, tweets) are not necessarily accurate, and many studies suggest that tweets do not need to be accurate, or at least evidence based, to receive traction. This is a dangerous combination in the sphere of health information.ObjectiveThe first objective of this study is to examine health-related tweets originating from Saudi Arabia in terms of their accuracy. The second objective is to find factors that relate to the accuracy and dissemination of these tweets, thereby enabling the identification of ways to enhance the dissemination of accurate tweets. The initial findings from this study and methodological improvements will then be employed in a larger-scale study that will address these issues in more detail.MethodsA health lexicon was used to extract health-related tweets using the Twitter application programming interface and the results were further filtered manually. A total of 300 tweets were each labeled by two medical doctors; the doctors agreed that 109 tweets were either accurate or inaccurate. Other measures were taken from these tweets’ metadata to see if there was any relationship between the measures and either the accuracy or the dissemination of the tweets. The entire range of this metadata was analyzed using Python, version 3.6.5 (Python Software Foundation), to answer the research questions posed.ResultsA total of 34 out of 109 tweets (31.2%) in the dataset used in this study were classified as untrustworthy health information. These came mainly from users with a non-health care background and social media accounts that had no corresponding physical (ie, organization) manifestation. Unsurprisingly, we found that traditionally trusted health sources were more likely to tweet accurate health information than other users. Likewise, these provisional results suggest that tweets posted in the morning are more trustworthy than tweets posted at night, possibly corresponding to official and casual posts, respectively. Our results also suggest that the crowd was quite good at identifying trustworthy information sources, as evidenced by the number of times a tweet’s author was tagged as favorited by the community.ConclusionsThe results indicate some initially surprising factors that might correlate with the accuracy of tweets and their dissemination. For example, the time a tweet was posted correlated with its accuracy, which may reflect a difference between professional (ie, morning) and hobbyist (ie, evening) tweets. More surprisingly, tweets containing a kashida—a decorative element in Arabic writing used to justify the text within lines—were more likely to be disseminated through retweets. These findings will be further assessed using data analysis techniques on a much larger dataset in future work.

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“…During the Ebola (2014) or the Zika (2016) outbreaks, social media enabled the CDC to be part of the sphere of active communication: to ask questions and get quick answers. By doing so, the CDC contributed to the public’s health literacy and uncertainty mitigation [30–32].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Correcting misinformation by health organizations during measles outbreaks: A controlled experiment

et al. 2018

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BackgroundDuring epidemic crises, some of the information the public receives on social media is misinformation. Health organizations are required to respond and correct the information to gain the public’s trust and influence it to follow the recommended instructions.Objectives(1) To examine ways for health organizations to correct misinformation concerning the measles vaccination on social networks for two groups: pro-vaccination and hesitant; (2) To examine the types of reactions of two subgroups (pro-vaccination, hesitant) to misinformation correction; and (3) To examine the effect of misinformation correction on these two subgroups regarding reliability, satisfaction, self-efficacy and intentions.MethodsA controlled experiment with participants divided randomly into two conditions. In both experiment conditions a dilemma was presented as to sending a child to kindergarten, followed by an identical Facebook post voicing the children mothers’ concerns. In the third stage the correction by the health organization is presented differently in two conditions: Condition 1 –common information correction, and Condition 2 –recommended (theory-based) information correction, mainly communicating information transparently and addressing the public’s concerns. The study included (n = 243) graduate students from the Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences at Haifa University.ResultsA statistically significant difference was found in the reliability level attributed to information correction by the Health Ministry between the Control condition and Experimental condition (sig<0.001), with the average reliability level of the subjects in Condition 2 (M = 5.68) being considerably higher than the average reliability level of subjects in Condition 1 (4.64). A significant difference was found between Condition 1 and Condition 2 (sig<0.001), with the average satisfaction from the Health Ministry’s response of Condition 2 subjects (M = 5.75) being significantly higher than the average satisfaction level of Condition 1 subjects (4.66). Similarly, when we tested the pro and hesitant groups separately, we found that both preferred the response presented in Condition 2.ConclusionIt is very important for the organizations to correct misinformation transparently, and to address the emotional aspects for both the pro-vaccination and the hesitant groups. The pro-vaccination group is not a captive audience, and it too requires a full response that addresses the public's fears and concerns.

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Content Analysis of a Live CDC Twitter Chat During the 2014 Ebola Outbreak

Cited by 39 publications

References 14 publications

Lessons for Crisis Communication on Social Media: A Systematic Review of What Research Tells the Practice

Lessons for Crisis Communication on Social Media: A Systematic Review of What Research Tells the Practice

Trustworthy Health-Related Tweets on Social Media in Saudi Arabia: Tweet Metadata Analysis

Correcting misinformation by health organizations during measles outbreaks: A controlled experiment

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