Learning from Tweets: Opportunities and Challenges to Inform Policy Making During Dengue Epidemic

Abstract

Social media platforms are widely used by people to report, access, and share information during outbreaks and epidemics. Although government agencies and healthcare institutions in developed regions are increasingly relying on social media to develop epidemic forecasts and outbreak response, there is a limited understanding of how people in developing regions interact on social media during outbreaks and what useful insights this dataset could offer during public health crises. In this work, we examined 28,688 tweets to identify public health issues during dengue epidemic in Bangladesh and found several insights, such as irregularities in dengue diagnosis and treatment, shortage of blood supply for Rh negative blood groups, and high local transmission of dengue during Eid-ul-Adha, that impact disease preparedness and outbreak response. We discuss the opportunities and challenges in analyzing tweets and outline how government agencies and healthcare institutions can use social media health data to inform policy making during public health crises.