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National and Local Influenza Surveillance through Twitter: An Analysis of the 2012-2013 Influenza Epidemic

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  • David A Broniatowski
  • Michael J Paul
  • Mark Dredze

Abstract

Social media have been proposed as a data source for influenza surveillance because they have the potential to offer real-time access to millions of short, geographically localized messages containing information regarding personal well-being. However, accuracy of social media surveillance systems declines with media attention because media attention increases “chatter” – messages that are about influenza but that do not pertain to an actual infection – masking signs of true influenza prevalence. This paper summarizes our recently developed influenza infection detection algorithm that automatically distinguishes relevant tweets from other chatter, and we describe our current influenza surveillance system which was actively deployed during the full 2012-2013 influenza season. Our objective was to analyze the performance of this system during the most recent 2012–2013 influenza season and to analyze the performance at multiple levels of geographic granularity, unlike past studies that focused on national or regional surveillance. Our system’s influenza prevalence estimates were strongly correlated with surveillance data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the United States (r = 0.93, p

Suggested Citation

  • David A Broniatowski & Michael J Paul & Mark Dredze, 2013. "National and Local Influenza Surveillance through Twitter: An Analysis of the 2012-2013 Influenza Epidemic," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(12), pages 1-1, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0083672
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0083672
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    1. Cynthia Chew & Gunther Eysenbach, 2010. "Pandemics in the Age of Twitter: Content Analysis of Tweets during the 2009 H1N1 Outbreak," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(11), pages 1-13, November.
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