Twitter, tweets and influencers

How many ways are there to tell a story and who will do it? In these months we tried to answer those questions by running an analysis of the most relevant tweets and accounts about some key words, chosen by the editorial board, focused on Zika virus and vaccines. We then developed an application to identify the most influential Twitter users on specific topics, according to a list of hashtag we have provided. Being based on mentions and retweets, such an approach is also effective in discovering influential users on the short period. Every day, the app extrapolates the most popular accounts according to our key words. A daily analysis of the firsts 20 accounts allowed us to identify some main categories:

•             Institutions
•             Media
•             Firms
•             Researchers
•             University, organizations, and charities. 

We analysed over 500 accounts: 13 belong to public institutions (i.e. United Nations or House Foreign Affairs Committee), 94 to public health institutions (i.e. CDC and WHO) and 66 to employees of public institutions (i.e. Gregory Härtl – Head of Public Relations/Social Media for the World Health Organization – or Tom Frieden – CDC Director). Six accounts belong to politicians (mostly in US).

This study underlined a strong prevalence of media related accounts. Among 100 accounts, we found that 16 belong to medical or scientific journals (as The Lancet or PLoS), 80 belong to newspapers (as Forbes) and 120 to journalists. 18 of the most popular accounts belong to researchers; universities, charities and organizations were included in a single group of 40 accounts. #Zika and #vaccine have been the most used hashtags. In particular, #Zika has been used by 455 accounts, while #vaccine was often used in association with other terms or some related concepts, like #vaccineworks, #immunisation and #autism. Finally, we found that 63 accounts were “unknown people” that, in most cases, only produced a few tweets. Our app recognised them as influencers because of their interactions with some relevant accounts (most of the times CDC, which often replies when cited). The absence of European accounts may be due on the one hand to the strong presence of #zika (whose spread is mainly focused in South America), and on the other hand to a smaller social presence of European institutions and media.  

MMLAP and other EU Projects

Health system analysis to support capacity development in response to the threat of pandemic influenza in Asia
Making society an active participant in water adaptation to global change
Public Participation in Developing a Common Framework for Assessment and Management of Sustainable Innovation
Engaging all of Europe in shaping a desirable and sustainable future
Expect the unexpected and know how to respond
Driving innovation in crisis management for European resilience
Effective communication in outbreak management: development of an evidence-based tool for Europe
Solutions to improve CBRNe resilience
Network for Communicable Disease Control in Southern Europe and Mediterranean Countries
Developing the framework for an epidemic forecast infrastructure
Strengthening of the national surveillance system for communicable diseases
Surveillance of vaccine preventable hepatitis
European monitoring of excess mortality for public health action
European network for highly infectious disease
Dedicated surveillance network for surveillance and control of vaccine preventable diseases in the EU
Modelling the spread of pandemic influenza and strategies for its containment and mitigation
Cost-effectiveness assessment of european influenza human pandemic alert and response strategies
Bridging the gap between science, stakeholders and policy makers
Promotion of immunization for health professionals in Europe
Towards inclusive research programming for sustainable food innovations
Addressing chronic diseases and healthy ageing across the life cycle
Medical ecosystem – personalized event-based surveillance
Studying the many and varied economic, social, legal and ethical aspects of the recent developments on the Internet, and their consequences for the individual and society at large
Get involved in the responsible marine research and innovation
Knowledge-based policy-making on issues involving science, technology and innovation, mainly based upon the practices in Parliamentary Technology Assessment
Assessment of the current pandemic preparedness and response tools, systems and practice at national, EU and global level in priority areas
Analysis of innovative public engagement tools and instruments for dynamic governance in the field of Science in Society
Public Engagement with Research And Research Engagement with Society
Computing Veracity – the Fourth Challenge of Big Data
Providing infrastructure, co-ordination and integration of existing clinical research networks on epidemics and pandemics
Promote vaccinations among migrant population in Europe
Creating mechanisms for effectively tackling the scientific and technology related challenges faced by society
Improve the quality of indoor air, keeping it free from radon
Improving respect of ethics principles and laws in research and innovation, in line with the evolution of technologies and societal concerns
Investigating how cities in the West securitise against global pandemics
Creating a structured dialogue and mutual learning with citizens and urban actors by setting up National Networks in 10 countries across Europe
Identifying how children can be change agents in the Science and Society relationship
Establishing an open dialogue between stakeholders concerning synthetic biology’s potential benefits and risks
Transparent communication in Epidemics: Learning Lessons from experience, delivering effective Messages, providing Evidence