This article was written by Brooke Jarvis of the Washington Post and can be found at http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-04/national/37429814_1_twitter-data-tweets-mark-dredze. The purpose of this article is to show that epidemiologists may start using Twitter in order to track influenza outbreaks and other diseases. Twitter could be a huge help in pinpointing the locations of disease outbreaks but as
Mark Dredze, an assistant computer professor at Johns Hopkins University, says, "“The question is: How do you take these billions of messages, find the useful information and get it to people who can respond?”. Dredze has studied computer linguistics for quite some time and knows how to gather information to locate outbreaks and he believes that it could prove to be a great breakthrough. However, there are some skeptics who believe that twitter is too disorganized and that it would be much harder to gather data than the normal method of going around to hospitals and other public health services. Also scientists are worried that someone tweeting about a sore throat may lead to false assumptions about outbreaks. Still, there are many people that believe that this will be successful. “It’s like a pulse on the world, because people will just tweet whatever, whenever,” explains Christophe Girraud-Carrier, an associate professor of computer science at Brigham Young University. To put it in simple terms the goal is for people to tweet about different outbreaks and then have an alert go out to warn people how to prevent it and how to treat it.
I found this article to be very interesting, innovative, and appealing. As a member of the twittersphere I think that this idea would be great and help a lot of people out. The only thing that could pose as a problem is the development of this technology. This is something that is going to be very hard to create and could encounter several problems along the way. Despite that I think that this innovation will be very beneficial to the public and prevent possible epidemics and even pandemics. Who knows what Twitter will bring to us but I believe that it will eventually be a success.
Hey Will, great ideas! It's so interesting so think about the effects of technology and social media on the spread (and knowledge of) infectious diseases! Not only are we much more up to date on diseases occurring in outbreaks all over the world, but now we can have minute-by-minute coverage. However, this coverage, when in extreme amounts, could lead to false information and fear for the public. Remember how Influenza was called "Spanish Flu" because the king of Spain died from it? The spanish were not restricted in their reports about influenza, and that ended up giving Spain a bad reputation for being the source of the outbreak, even though that was false.The idea of using Twitter is good, but what about the other social medias? I think that we need a more controlled manner in which to report data than someone tweeting about their runny nose, in order to prevent people from becoming afraid of an outbreak which doesn't really exist.Also, i'd like to refrain from relying on social media to track outbreaks, and more on official documents like hospital records and obituaries.
ReplyDeleteWhat this article is saying is a great idea. While it could be hard to know exactly who has the flu or if they are just over exaggerating a sickness could cause some confusion. Besides that i think twitter could be a great way to track outbreaks. With so many people engaged in twitter it seems weird not to have one during this time. If used correctly and organized better this would be a great tool to use to see where outbreaks occur. I think this could expand more than twitter and include all social networking sites. Would this be effective though or would it be to much clustered and not enough certainty of who has the flu or who has just a cold?
ReplyDeleteI think that it would be to hard to tell who has actually been diagnosed with a legitimate disease. I feel like many people will take this as a joke and try to spam it with fake accounts causing the site to lose its legitimacy. Also, who wants to announce over Twitter that they have a disease. I think it is a good idea but I don't think people will use it as intended.
ReplyDeleteThis article was definitely very interesting. I think it was a good idea in the beginning because Twitter and other social medias are so popular these days and people are constantly tweeting about anything going on in their life. However, I agree with everyone commenting above that it would be a risky way to gather data because of people tweeting only about minor sickness or simply lying in their tweets or as Brenden said, using a fake account. It just shows how society is so affected by social media that epidemiologists would use it to track diseases.
ReplyDeleteI found this article very interesting. In some ways social media has had a positive effect on disease awareness. However I also think social media has lead to many rumors, lies, and an overall spread of false information relating to disease. It so easy today to post something on a social media site and almost instantly people see it and spread it not even knowing if the information their reading is valid. I agree with Brendan the idea of incorporating twitter and other forms of social media is good however many people may take this as a joke or post illegitimate statements. It would be interesting to see how people would respond to this and how seriously they would take it.
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