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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Wasim Ahmed
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.
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.
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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