What Did They Say about H1N1 and Pandemic? Interpreting Consumer-Generated Online Conversations in Social Media

Background: With the threat of H5N1 (avian) flu and the 2009 H1N1 (swine) flu, CDC disseminated and reinforced many messages to reduce risks for spreading these viruses and treating flu.  

Program background: CDC worked with The American Institutes for Research and The Nielsen Company (on behalf of Nielsen Government & Public Sector) to look at the level of uptake of CDC H1N1 messaging (hand washing , staying home while sick, getting vaccinated) among online consumers, and analyze online communication about pandemic flu and 2009 H1N1 response.      CDC also sought insight into how the real-time public lexicon changed in discussions about pandemic and related topics (e.g. H1N1, H5N1) pre- and post- peak of 2009 H1N1 pandemic.  Results of the CAM analysis can help inform future health messaging around pandemics.This is the second phase of CDC’s Take the Lead: Working Together to Prepare Now (TTL) campaign begun by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2007. TLL emphasizes social mobilization by local leaders and community-based organizations to prepare and respond to flu outbreaks, including 2009 H1N1. Social media and understanding the public conversation online about the topic was part of the campaign.

Evaluation Methods and Results: Nielsen Online uses proprietary software to search messages and the relationships between these messages using these datasets:  126 million blogs, 10,000 message boards, 60,000 online user groups, and Twitter & public Facebook fan pages.  This analysis focused on English language content based in North America. CAMs are a combination of factor analysis and multidimensional scaling (MDS) to determine the underlying dimensions of a conversation and visualize the associations various words and phrases have in the conversation. CAMs demonstrate the unique relationships among messages that organically develop and are discussed online.   · All terms on the map have a unique relationship to the central concept, (e.g. pandemic or H1N1 flu).  The closer a word appears to the center the stronger the association (e.g. where CDC is located around the concept). · The groupings of terms indicate the dimensions of discussion. They are micro-conversations within a broader discussion.

Conclusions:The CAM is a sophisticated visualization tool letting communicators view the concepts consumers associate with a specific topic as manifested through social media, and gain insights into consumer attitudes and stated beliefs. It can also provide a data-driven visual depiction of concepts that dominate the conversation and identify what topics they are related to.  CAMs can clearly map changes in the conversation over time. Data from these CAMs will be available June 2010.

Implications for research and/or practice: Specific implications for pandemic, H1N1 or H5N1 messaging will be reported at the conference. CAMs can help public health leadership understand the public conversation, gauge the impact of and set new directions for communication efforts.