Monitoring Influenza Trends through Mining Social Media

Analysis of Google Influenza-like-illness (ILI) search queries has shown a strongly correlated pattern with Center for Disease Control and Prevention seasonal ILI reporting data. Web and social media (WSM) provide another resource to detect increases in ILI. This paper evaluates trends in blog posts that discuss Influenza. The results of the analysis show Influenza-related blogging trends have a significant correlation with the beginning of US Fall 2008 flu season. We also identify WSM Influenza-related communities that share flu-postings which could broker or disseminate information in the case of a severe outbreak or Influenza epidemic.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: BIOCOMP
• Authors: Courtney Corley, Armin R. Mikler, Karan P. Singh, Diane J. Cook
• Keywords: BIOCOMP 2007, BIOCOMP 2009, Paper Evaluates Trends, Prevention Seasonal Ili, WSM Influenza-related Communities