See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/319209020

Crisis Communications in the Age of Social Media: A Network Analysis of

Zika-Related Tweets

Article in Social Science Computer Review · August 2017

DOI: 10.1177/0894439317721985

CITATIONS READS

150 2,698

5 authors, including:

Loni Hagen Thomas E Keller

University of South Florida Georgia Institute of Technology
55 PUBLICATIONS 958 CITATIONS 23 PUBLICATIONS 782 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Stephen R. Neely Nic DePaula

University of South Florida SUNY Polytechnic Institute
28 PUBLICATIONS 678 CITATIONS 22 PUBLICATIONS 486 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Loni Hagen on 02 November 2017.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Article
Social Science Computer Review
1-19
ª The Author(s) 2017
Crisis Communications in the Reprints and permission:
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Age of Social Media: A Network DOI: 10.1177/0894439317721985
journals.sagepub.com/home/ssc
Analysis of Zika-Related Tweets

Loni Hagen1, Thomas Keller2, Stephen Neely1, Nic DePaula3,

and Claudia Robert-Cooperman1

Abstract
While emerging technologies such as social media have demonstrated value for crisis communica-
tions, significant question remains regarding how these tools can be most effectively leveraged to
facilitate the flow of valid information under crisis conditions. In an effort to address these issues, this
article examines the use of Twitter during the 2015–2016 Zika virus outbreak in the United States.
Particular attention is paid to network structures within the Zika conversation and how different
actors and communities contribute to the flow of information throughout the broader Twitter
community. Public-facing organizations can benefit from a deeper understanding of the nature and
structure of spontaneously occurring communities on social media as well as the types of content
that they create and circulate. As such, these findings have significant implications for the devel-
opment of effective social media strategies during natural disasters and public health emergencies. In
particular, this analysis identifies several predominant themes communicated through Zika-related
tweets as well as a number of distinct communities and influential actors. The findings suggest that
respected political actors, public institutions, as well as those with valid scientific credentials can help
to facilitate the flow of accurate and vital information across disparate communities.

Keywords
Zika, health emergency management, social network analysis, Twitter, crisis informatics

Public emergencies place unique strains on information networks, and as such, effective crisis
communications are essential to successful emergency management (Houston et al., 2014; Pechta,
Brandenburg, & Seeger, 2010; Steelman, Nowell, Bayoumi, & McCaffrey, 2014). Crisis commu-
nications are typically defined by high levels of ambiguity, fluid conditions, and a diversity of
informational needs (Kapucu, Arslan, & Demiroz, 2010; Pechta et al., 2010; Steelman et al.,
2014). During these incidents, public information seeking increases (i.e., Nelson, Spence,

1
University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA
2
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA
3
University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:
Loni Hagen, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave. CIS2031, Tampa, FL 33620, USA.
Email: [email protected]
2 Social Science Computer Review XX(X)

& Lachlan, 2009; Spence & Lachlan, 2005; Stewart & Wilson, 2016), as a greater number of
individuals and organizations search out critical information, further taxing communication net-
works when they are most vulnerable (Simon, Goldberg, & Adini, 2015). Public emergencies
therefore pose formidable challenges, both for official actors (i.e., agencies and organizations tasked
with informing the public) and for individual citizens (i.e., those seeking reliable, accurate, and up-
to-date information). Given these challenges, a considerable body of literature has focused on how
best to facilitate the flow of reliable information under crisis conditions (i.e., Houston et al., 2014;
Pechta et al., 2010; Steelman et al., 2014).
Historically, mass media have played a principal role in this process (Pechta et al., 2010), serving
as a conduit for the flow of information from official actors to the general public. However, over
recent years social media has become increasingly prominent in crisis communications (Bernier,
2013; Merchant, Elmer, & Lurie, 2011; Mergel, 2012). As social media usage expands, citizens
frequently turn to these platforms for public health updates and emergency information (American
Red Cross, 2012; Jin, Liu, & Austin, 2014; Lachlan, Spence, Lin, Najarian, & Greco, 2016; René,
2016). Consequently, many public-facing organizations are now using social media to distribute
critical preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery information to citizens across a wide
spectrum of emergency scenarios, including public health scares, natural disasters, and even terrorist
attacks (i.e., Bernier, 2013; Merchant et al., 2011; Simon, Goldberg, Aharonson-Daniel, Leykin, &
Adini, 2014).
A nascent body of literature suggests that these technologies may augment the efficient, effective,
and targeted flow of information during public emergencies, due in large part to their widespread
accessibility and the collaborative nature of social networking sites (i.e., Graham, Avery, & Park,
2015; Hughes & Palen, 2009, 2012). However, despite these claims, research on the use of social
media in emergency scenarios is still embryonic (Graham et al., 2015), and significant questions
remain regarding the efficacy and reliability of these technologies, as well as how best to deploy
them in a manner consistent with the unique challenges of crisis communications. This study builds
on previous research in the fields of public health and emergency management in an attempt to
address these key issues and contribute to the knowledge base in this area. In order to do so, we look
specifically at the use of Twitter during the 2015–2016 Zika virus outbreak in the United States.
Focusing on the flow of information surrounding the U.S. Zika outbreak, we present findings
from both content and network analyses conducted on a sample of Zika-related tweets. In particular,
we focus on the structure of communication networks, the content of Zika-related tweets, and the
identification of influential actors. Through content analyses, we identify six predominant themes
communicated in Zika-related tweets: (1) the spread of Zika, (2) criticism of government responses,
(3) symptoms of Zika, (4) scientific news about Zika, (5) reports about bee killing incidents in South
Carolina, and (6) government outreach efforts. We also identify three primary groups within the
Zika conversation: (1) the Senator Rubio community, (2) authoritative institutions, and (3) boundary
spanners. We believe that these findings can help to improve the practice of crisis communications
by allowing researchers as well as public agencies to better understand the structure of communi-
cation networks that emerge via social media and to develop communicative strategies aimed at
identifying and partnering with those social media actors who are best positioned to distribute valid
and reliable information to the public.

Literature Review
Social Media and Public Information Seeking
The past decade has seen an exponential rise in the adoption of social media technologies. A recent
study by the Pew Research Center reported that 72% of American adults now use at least one social
Hagen et al. 3

networking site (Perrin, 2015). This marks a sharp increase over the past 10 years, up from only 8%
in 2005. While younger, more educated Americans continue to use social media at higher rates,
many of the recent gains have occurred among nontraditional users such as senior citizens, ethnic
minorities, rural residents, and individuals from low-income households (Madden & Zickuhr, 2011;
Perrin, 2015). Collectively, these numbers demonstrate that social media applications, once consid-
ered a novel form of personal networking, have become an established means of communication in
American society.
As these emerging technologies have become more ubiquitous, they have also become more
amenable to the distribution of media content and substantive information. The ability of social
media platforms to rapidly transmit information, including embedded links, news content, and
videos, has produced fundamental shifts in both patterns of usage and the content of social media
communications. As a result, Americans increasingly engage in active information seeking via
social media (Gottfried & Shearer, 2016; Kim, Sin, & Tsai, 2014)—alongside the passive infor-
mation seeking and learning that inevitably occurs in networked social environments. For exam-
ple, Gottfried and Shearer (2016) recently noted that 62% of American adults seek out news
content and public information through their social media accounts. Along with these shifts in
online behavior have come heightened expectations regarding the adoption and usage of social
media on the part of official actors, such as political officeholders, public agencies, and nonprofit
service providers. As users become more adept at communicating via social media, they expect
these actors to communicate with them through similar means (American Red Cross, 2012;
Mergel, 2012).
These trends have been particularly acute in the fields of public health and emergency manage-
ment, which are traditionally marked by high levels of information seeking. Evidence shows that
many Americans now turn to social media during times of crisis when seeking information such as
safety instructions and news updates, as well as weather, traffic, and damage reports (American Red
Cross, 2012; Jin et al., 2014; Lachlan et al., 2016; René, 2016). Furthermore, the public increasingly
expects official actors to respond to public requests through social media. A recent study conducted
by the American Red Cross (2012) found that 70% of Americans believe emergency responders
should actively engage the public during crises via social media, while 68% expect timely responses
when placing requests for assistance on social media.

Social Media in Public Health and Emergency Scenarios

These heightened expectations are due in large part to the perceived benefits of social media for
crisis communications. It is believed that social media can hasten the dissemination of information
in times of crisis by linking end users directly to critical information sources in real-time (i.e.,
Graham et al., 2015; Hughes & Palen, 2012). Research appears to support these claims. A number
of studies now show that social media allows emergency responders, public health officials, and
even media outlets to communicate directly with the public, eliminating the time it takes for
emergency information to flow through traditional communication channels (i.e., Hughes & Palen,
2012; Palen & Liu, 2007).
This functionality was prominently displayed during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. While the storm
knocked out power and disrupted cellular service throughout much of the Northeast, many citizens
still had access to social media outlets. This allowed official actors (such as the Governors of New
York and New Jersey as well as Con Edison and local emergency response agencies) to continue
transmitting critical updates even after citizens had been cut off from many traditional information
sources. These actors used social media sites such as Twitter to directly distribute storm-related
information to the public, including power outage updates, evacuation plans, and notices about clean
drinking water (Stewart & Wilson, 2016). In total, more than 20 million hurricane-related tweets
4 Social Science Computer Review XX(X)

were sent in the days immediately surrounding the storm—more than half of them included news,
information updates, and storm-related videos (Guskin & Hitlin, 2012).
Targeted social media campaigns have also become commonplace among public health organi-
zations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health
Organization (WHO; Yun et al., 2016). In similar fashion, local health departments and hospitals/
emergency rooms (ERs) have also begun providing up-to-date information via social media, includ-
ing ER wait times and instructions for disease prevention (Merchant et al., 2011; Thackeray, Neiger,
Smith, & Van Wagenen, 2012). In the case of acute public health emergencies, social media can be
deployed quickly to disseminate critical information to the public. For example, in 2009, the
Alexandria Virginia Health Department effectively used Twitter to direct citizens to vaccination
sites during the H1N1 influenza outbreak (Merchant et al., 2011), and extensive research has been
conducted regarding the use of social media as a source of public information during the Ebola
outbreak in West Africa (Fung, Tse, Cheung, Miu, & Fu, 2014).
On top of allowing direct access to end users, social media may help to curtail the workload for
emergency response organizations. Prior studies have supported this contention, suggesting that the
proactive dissemination of information through online mediums reduces the number of information
requests received from the public (Hughes & Palen, 2012; Latonero & Shklovski, 2011). Further-
more, the collaborative nature of social media facilitates a multidirectional flow of information,
allowing citizens to become engaged in the emergency response process by redistributing informa-
tion, posting incident updates, making requests for information or assistance, and even creating news
content (Hughes & Palen, 2009; Hughes, Palen, Sutton, Liu, & Vieweg, 2008; Hughes & Tapia,
2015; Palen & Liu, 2007; Yoo, Rand, Eftekhar, & Rabinovich, 2016). During Hurricane Sandy,
private citizens utilized social media extensively to redistribute emergency updates, connect with
loved ones, and provide eyewitness accounts in the form of microblogs and videos, many of which
were subsequently used by traditional media outlets reporting on the storm (Stewart & Wilson,
2016). Similarly, during the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing, social media users actively redis-
tributed official information via Twitter regarding the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s ongoing
manhunt, facilitating public engagement and vigilance, which ultimately assisted in the capture of
the bombing suspects (CBS News, 2013).
Over recent years, an expanding body of research has demonstrated the breadth of social media’s
application in both natural and man-made disasters. These analyses have often focused on event-
specific case studies—attempting to explicate specific uses as well as the pros and cons of social
media usage during disaster scenarios such as widespread flooding (Bird, Ling, & Haynes, 2012),
typhoons and tsunamis (Acar & Muraki, 2011; Cool et al., 2015), earthquakes (Yates & Paquette,
2011), oil spills (Starbird et al., 2015), and even terrorist attacks (Simon et al., 2014).
While the existing literature has tended to identify social media as a positive tool in crisis
communications, significant concerns have been raised over the potential for negative externalities
and misuse (both by official and anonymous actors). Both researchers and practitioners have cau-
tioned against social media’s propensity to proliferate inaccurate data, unverified rumors, and even
malicious misinformation (Conrado, Neville, Woodworth, & O’Riordan, 2016; Hughes & Palen,
2012; Webb et al., 2016). Because information disseminated through social media is often unver-
ified, identifying accurate data and valid sources can be challenging. This concern is exacerbated by
both the fluid pace of crisis communications and the potential for information overload in open-
access media platforms. For example, in the wake of Japan’s Tohoku Earthquake (2011), emergency
responders received a high volume of requests for assistance via Twitter. In many cases, these
requests were retweeted by other users even after the victims had been rescued, making it difficult
for first responders to distinguish between current and outdated information (Acar & Muraki, 2011).
Similarly, after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, initial social media posts misidentified the
appropriate suspects, leading to both wrongful accusations and a misallocation of critical resources
Hagen et al. 5

(Henn, 2013). These negative externalities underscore some of the unique challenges of crisis
communications and how they can be amplified by unregulated social networks. Thus, a critical
challenge facing emergency managers is how to proactively develop online communication strate-
gies that emphasize and facilitate the spread of accurate and reliable information via social media.

Research Questions
One way to optimize the strategic value of social media for crisis communications is to better
understand the nature of emergency content communicated via platforms such as Twitter as well
as the structure of naturally forming communities within a social network. When analyzing the
content of social media communications, we should bear in mind that users are social learners who
tend to be influenced by information received from others in their social network (Burke, Marlow, &
Lento, 2009). Some social media users set professional and political agendas, while far more users
redistribute this information to others (Smith, Rainie, Shneiderman, & Himelboim, 2014). This
means that network structures may have a significant influence over the topics communicated via
social media. Computational efforts to detect and characterize naturally occurring communities in
complex networks are called community detection (Newman, 2006).
Communities within a social network can be anything from issue-oriented communities in health-
related conversations (Xu, Chiu, Chen, & Mukherjee, 2015) to polarized political retweet networks
(Conover, Goncalves, Ratkiewicz, Flammini, & Menczer, 2011). These communities can be identified
because people are more inclined to communicate with others who hold similar interests (Barberá, 2015;
Xu et al., 2015). In addition, people form communities through the process of interaction. According to
Choi and Park (2013), retweeting appears to help form collective identity through affirmative validation
and quick responsiveness to participants with similar interests (Choi & Park, 2013). Detecting commu-
nities in social networks is important because it shows how people are interconnected when engaging in
conversations. With the explosion of big data availability in addition to advancements in computational
technologies, scholars, especially mathematical scientists, have developed community detection tech-
niques such as modularity to efficiently detect densely connected groups of actors compared to “sparser
connections between groups” (Newman, 2006, p. 8577). In order to optimize emergency communica-
tion efforts, we need to consider the structure of communities as well as the content of emergency
communications. Hence, the following research questions are posed:

Research Question 1: What distinctive communities naturally emerged within the Zika
conversation on Twitter?
Research Question 2: What are the primary topics discussed within these communities?

In order to optimize the strategic value of social media for crisis communications, it is also
important to understand which types of actors are most influential in terms of communicating
emergency information to the public. Doing so will allow public agencies and official actors to
proactively develop effective information networks to meet the challenges of emergency commu-
nications. Understanding power dynamics and detecting influential actors is important because these
actors can influence others’ attitudes and behaviors as well as ensure the flow of accurate and
reliable information (Rogers, 1995). Traditionally, scholars have detected influential actors in social
networks based on three attributes: popularity, authority, and connectivity. First, an actor can be
influential if he or she is connected to important actors (Bonacich, 2007; Borgatti & Halgin, 2011).
For example, an actor with five famous friends is considered more influential when compared to an
actor with five unpopular friends. Second, as an extension of the previous idea, one can be an
influential actor if he or she is considered to be an authoritative source of information among people
who are also popular (Giménez-Garcıa, Thakkar, & Zimmermann, 2016). For example, when an
6 Social Science Computer Review XX(X)

authoritative actor creates online information, their content will be more highly read and circulated
if they have an established reputation for creating/distributing high-quality, reliable information
(Franceschet, 2011). Third, an actor can be influential if he or she connects two or more otherwise
disconnected communities (Lusseau & Newman, 2004). These influential actors are generally
located on the boundary between communities and thus are called boundary spanners or bridges.
Given the perceived importance of influential actors in emergency communication networks, we
posed the following research questions:

Research Question 3: Who are the most popular actors within the Zika conversation?
Research Question 4: Who are considered the most authoritative actors within the Zika
conversation?
Research Question 5: Which actors are most effective at connecting disparate communities
within the Zika conversation?

Method
Data
Using the Twitter stream application programming interface with “Zika” as the query, we collected
Twitter data from August 25 to September 5, 2016, during which reported cases of Zika increased
dramatically, particularly in the Miami, Florida, area (Dapena & Alcantara, 2017).
Following standards set by Barberá, Jost, Nagler, Tucker, and Bonneau (2015), we limited our
analysis to Twitter accounts with less than 25 followers and following less than 100 accounts (Barberá
et al., 2015). We also excluded Spanish language Tweets from our analysis. As a result, a total of
359,043 tweets were used for analysis. In order to conduct social network analysis, we created edge
lists by using retweet relations. An edge means a connection between two nodes. In our study, an edge
is a retweet. For example, we created an edge when a tweet from Account A is retweeted by Account
B. Each node in the network is an account that retweeted at least one tweet about Zika during the
survey window. From these nodes and edge lists, we created a directed graph of the network. As a
result, a total of 112,165 nodes and 150,324 edges were generated. The data cleaning, as well as the
initial creation of nodes and edges, was conducted using the R programming language (R Core Team,
2015). The R scripts used to parse the Twitter stream JavaScript Object Notation files and construct the
retweet network are available at http://information-analytics.cas.usf.edu/zikastudy/contents.html

Filtering for Meaningful Community Detection in Gephi

We used Gephi Version 0.9.1, an open-source software package (Bastian, Heymann, & Jacomy, 2009),
for data analysis and network visualization. We chose to use the graph layout ForceAtlas2 (Jacomy,
Venturini, Heymann, & Bastian, 2014), which efficiently displays the strategic importance of actors.
We have filtered in the giant component—a functionality embedded in Gephi for filtering—and nodes
with more than 30 degrees. Filtering was necessary for two reasons: First, large complete networks are
too complex to meaningfully visualize the detected patterns. Second and more importantly, large
samples of nodes (such as over 100,000) create too many communities (over 5,000 communities are
detected), which inhibits interpretation of the characteristics of each community. As a result of the
filtering, a total of 593 nodes and 2,536 edges were used for the retweet analysis.

Community Detection and Content Analysis

Community detection has been formulized as an optimization task in which “one searches for the
maximal value of the quantity known as modularity over possible divisions of a network” (Newman,
Hagen et al. 7

2006, p. 8582). Modularity captures the strength of density in the graph and divides a network into
modules. Density is calculated by dividing the number of edges by the number of possible edges and
is used to separate a network into subgroups in which nodes are connected closely to each other, but
loosely connected to nodes outside of their group (McSweeney, 2009). Therefore, information can
diffuse rapidly inside the high-density group, but it may not spread as quickly (if at all) outside of the
group. In contrast, low-density networks are advantageous for fast diffusion of information through-
out the entire network. Using Blondel’s algorithm as the modularity function (Blondel, Guillaume,
Lambiotte, & Lefebvre, 2008), we created 10 communities as a result of implementing the default
setting of Gephi (resolution ¼ 1.0, randomize, use weights) for the modularity algorithm.
Using the major communities detected, we conducted manual content analysis in order to under-
stand the topics of tweets that were highly retweeted. Traditional content analysis depends on
manual reading of text data in order to understand particular phenomena (Krippendorff, 2012). A
manual content analysis includes two major tasks: category development and coding. A category
scheme can be developed based on previous research (deductively) or using the grounded theory
approach (inductively)—a new category is created until no new categories emerge. Once a category
scheme is developed, annotators code documents using the category scheme.

Network Analysis for Finding Influential Twitterers

As stated above in the Literature Review, we consider three types of influential Twitterers in this
study based on connectivity, popularity, and authority. First, we use betweenness centrality to
measure the level of importance and influence of a node in controlling the flow of information
(Brandes, 2001; Easley & Keinberg, 2010; Freeman, 1978; Golbeck, 2013). The betweeness of a
node n, for example, can be calculated by summing up the fractions of all of the shortest paths
between two nodes that go through the node n in a network (Golbeck, 2013, p. 30). Nodes (actors)
with high betweenness centrality are important because they are considered to have “early access to
information that originates in multiple, noninteracting parts of the network” (Easley & Keinberg,
2010, pp. 60–62). Betweenness centrality has been frequently used to identify individuals with high
brokerage potential. Actors with high betweenness centrality are sometimes called boundary span-
ners. These actors are important since they connect groups that otherwise would not have been
connected to each other. Studies show that betweenness centrality follows a power law distribution,
thus a small number of key individuals control the flow of information (Lusseau & Newman, 2004).
Second, eigenvector centrality acknowledges that some nodes are more influential because they are
connected to important actors. Eigenvector centrality is considered to be a good measure for the
power of individual nodes to spread information across a network. Therefore, an actor with high
eigenvector centrality is considered to have a high information spreading power (Canright & Engø-
Monsen, 2006). Third, PageRank is a variant of eigenvector centrality that finds the nodes highly
endorsed by surrounding actors (Brin & Page, 1998). Previous studies show that PageRank accu-
rately indicates reliability and trust of a node (actor; Caverlee, Liu, & Webb, 2008; Giménez-Garcıa
et al., 2016). For calculating betweeness centrality and eigenvector centrality, we implemented the
Brandes (2001) algorithm (Brandes, 2001), the output of which was normalized. To calculate
PageRank, we implemented Brin and Page’s (1998) PageRank algorithm, which we used with the
default parameter settings (Brin & Page, 1998).

Findings
Communities in the Zika Retweet Network and Contents Communicated
We calculated modularity to automatically detect communities within the Zika retweet network
based on the observed retweet relations between Twitterers. Using the Blondel’s modularity
8 Social Science Computer Review XX(X)

Table 1. Content Analysis of Zika Retweet.

Number of Assigned
Category Example Tweet Tweets (Percentage)

Spread of Zika Singapore confirms 26 more cases of locally transmitted Zika virus 71 (36)
infection. Zika explained: https://t.co/DS0KFaWogD
Congress Every day the Republican Party stalls funding #Zika response, more 49 (25)
people get sick. More babies risk being born with heartbreaking
head deformities
News about Zika .@ziyatong Symptoms of #Zika are milder and more infrequent than 38 (19)
Chikungunya and Dengue. @EverydayHealth #atozika https://t.co/
v7nPwlOXg0,
Scientific news Spread of Zika virus pushes testing labs to expand capacity https:// 25 (13)
about Zika t.co/lM3IMiBle6
Bee killing “Stop. This is crazy . . . We can’t live without these honeybees”: Zika 8 (4)
spraying kills millions of honeybees https://t.co/VHfMe2kffo
Government Now’s your chance to ask your #Zika questions; hear from top US 6 (3)
outreach health experts. Tweet your questions with #AtoZika. https://t.co/
DCLEhy64EW
Others I’ll try to tweet a few things during the mosquito/arbovirus meeting 3 (2)
so keep an eye on #MCAA2016! #zika #dengue https://t.co/
N3UjPyceet
Total 200 (100)

algorithm embedded in Gephi, we produced ten communities, each of which has an identification
number between 0 and 9—we call these “Modularity Class IDs” below. Each modularity class
indicates that there are more frequent retweets inside that unique cluster when compared to the
connections of that community with the rest of the social network (Fortunato, 2010). In general, a
modularity class can be interpreted as representing a unique community. Of the ten communities
identified in our analysis, over 83% of tweets belong to the top 4 communities (Modularity Class IDs
#3, #4, #6, and #7 in Online Supplementary Figure 1).
To understand the content of retweets more fully, we randomly sampled 200 tweets of the tweets
from the four largest modularity classes. Then we coded these tweets using the seven mutually
exclusive and exhaustive categories appearing in Table 1. The seven categories were developed
using a grounded theory approach (Corbin & Strauss, 1990).
The content analysis shows that 36% of tweets express concerns regarding the spread of Zika in the
United States as well as in East Asian countries and Africa. Twenty-five percent of tweets express
frustration with the U.S. Congress for its slow legislative response to the outbreak. Nineteen percent of
retweets discuss the health impact of Zika as well as education and prevention measures. Thirteen
percent of tweets include scientific news about Zika, such as research findings about possible treat-
ments and vaccine development. Four percent of tweets discuss the millions of bees killed in South
Carolina during spraying to combat Zika. Although not highly retweeted, government efforts to
encourage citizen participation in the Zika conversation represented 3% of the sampled tweets.
We then combined these coded tweets with the modularity class results and depicted the number
of tweets categorized in each of the seven content categories. Although Modularity Classes #4 and
#5 include over 50% of Twitterers, the majority of retweets sampled for the content analysis are
created by Twitterers clustered in Modularity Class #7. This means that tweets created by entities in
Modularity Class #7 are disproportionally retweeted.
Among the topics discussed by Twitterers in each of the four modularity classes, concerns about
spreading Zika in diverse geographic areas are a common concern shared by all groups. In addition,
Hagen et al. 9

Table 2. The Top ten Entities With High Eigenvector Centrality.

Twitter Eigenvector
Account Centrality Description of the Account

Toddkron 1.00 Digital Marketing Manager at XOOM Energy. Sen Marco Rubio supporter
jennanjack 0.96 Joined March 2009, has 7,233 followers, she is a republican and Marco Rubio
supporter
SenRubioPress 0.91 Official account of U.S. Senator Marco Rubio’s Press Shop
msksweetness 0.74 Joined October 2010, has 1,238 followers, she is a Marco Rubio supporter for
Senate
Zika_News 0.74 Bots that detect and share news circulating in the Twitter community on Zika
virus
lisetteh0325 0.65 Joined June 2012, has 710 followers, she is a Marco Rubio supporter and critic of
Hillary Clinton
AlexConant 0.62 Partner at Firehouse Strategies. Former Communications Director for Marco
Rubio
pessell_anna 0.62 Joined March 2016 has 4,665 followers, a teacher, Marco Rubio supporter
rose10052 0.59 Joined November 2015, has 3,873 followers, she is a Marco Rubio supporter who
criticizes Hillary Clinton
stevenacurtis 0.57 Conservative Christian, Marco Rubio supporter. Joined February 2009, has 2,008
followers
Note. The account description is the summary of each account based on the account holder’s description.

Twitterers in Modularity Class #3 are disproportionally interested in discussing Congress’s lack of

action against the spread of Zika. It is worthwhile to note that the vast majority of discussions about
scientific news occur in Modularity Class #7. Although the size of Modularity Class #7 is relatively
small (17% of Twitterers, see Online Supplementary Figure 1), it has the highest number of retweets
among the four sampled modularity classes. We will discuss this in the following subsection on
betweenness centrality and the discussion section.

Influential Twitterers
Identifying influential Twitterers in the Zika network is important because the speed and scope of
information diffusion depends on the level of influence an actor has in the social network (Yoo et al.,
2016). We identify three types of influential Twitterers based on their connectivity, popularity, and
authority by acquiring their betweenness centrality, eigenvector centrality, and PageRank measures,
respectively.
Eigenvector centrality indicates an actor’s power to spread information considering both the
number of contacts of an entity and the connections of these contacts. Of the top ten Twitter accounts
with the highest eigenvector centralities, nine Twitter accounts belong to Modularity Class #8,
which clusters around Senator Marco Rubio’s (Florida) supporters (see Online Supplementary
Figure 1 for network topology and see Table 2 and 5). Zika_News (an automatic information
aggregator) is the only one that is not a part of the Marco Rubio cluster. It seems that the Marco
Rubio cluster is a manifestation of the Republican Senate primary that took place on August 30,
2016. The first 6 days of data collection overlap with local politics in Florida since the Zika outbreak
was one of the top social and political issues in Florida. The fact that most of the entities in the Marco
Rubio cluster have high eigenvector centrality suggests that they are savvy political activists, who
are connected with popular Twitter users and actively have engaged with the conversation on Zika.
The topology in Table 5 shows that the Senator Rubio cluster (Modularity Class #8) has the greatest
distance from Modularity Class #3, which includes many tweets that are highly critical of the
10 Social Science Computer Review XX(X)

Table 3. Top ten Entities With High PageRank Value.

Twitter Account PageRank Description of the Account

TheDailyEdge .05 Entertainment and gossip, political news, commentary, and liberal humor
NYTHealth .02 Health news from the science desk of The New York Times
NYTScience .02 Science, environment, space, and cosmos news from the science desk of The New
York Times
WHO .02 World Health Organization, the United Nations’ health agency
vj44 .01 Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama. Chair of the White House Council
on Women and Girls
WHOSEARO .01 Official Twitter account for the World Health Organization Regional Office for
South-East Asia (SEARO)
DrFriedenCDC .01 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director, MD, and Acting
Administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
WhiteHouse .01 Tweets from POTUS and their administration
gov .01 Updates from the @Twitter Government and Elections team
HHSGov .01 News and info from U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services

government’s response. Perhaps Modularity Class #3 may include more actors who are ideologically
opposed to the Marco Rubio cluster (we revisit this issue later). The topology and the actors with
high eigenvector centralities highlight the complex context wherein the Zika conversation takes
place. In this case, it was the Republican Senate Primary. In addition, they underscore the fact that
political communities may be highly influential in framing public emergency conversations on
Twitter (Groshek & Al-Rawi, 2013).
PageRank values indicate the level of authority and trust given to Twitterers by other Twitterers
(Caverlee et al., 2008; Giménez-Garcıa et al., 2016). The Daily Edge, an Internet news publication
for entertainment and gossip, has the highest demonstrated authority vis-à-vis Zika retweets. The
other two of the top three PageRank Twitter accounts are news media outlets specializing in health
and science (NYTHealth and NYTScience in Table 3). Most of the top ten accounts with high
PageRank are related to actors with specialties in health and science policies: three of them are
media outlets and the rest of them are either public institutions or individuals associated with public
institutions. It is noticeable that public and government agencies appear to be highly authoritative.
For example, WHO, WHOSEARO, WhiteHouse, and HHSGov all have high PageRank values,
meaning they are regarded as highly authoritative information sources.
Actors with high betweenness centrality are considered to have “substantial influence” and are
often referred to as boundary spanners (Newman, 2008). Boundary spanners are considered to be
influential because they can amplify social dialog by widely redistributing information from diverse
communities. Thus, they function as liaisons between communities, regulate access to information
sources, and control the ways in which information passes between disparate groups. Since actors
with high betweenness centrality get information from diverse sources, the information they acquire
and redistribute is expected to be balanced, rather than one-sided.
We found that entities with the highest betweenness centrality are mostly experts in infectious
disease. For example, MackayIM is a PhD who works at the Australian Infectious Diseases Research
Center with a focus on infection. In addition, neil_bodie is the CEO of a company developing
disruptive technology for infectious agents. Similarly, greg_folkers works at the National Institute
of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. These individuals have credentials and respect in a specialized
area (in this case, infectious disease).
We also found several actors involved in politics, such as Ssimms777, courtchauncey, margo94,
RealMuckmaker, LeChatNoire4, and annie5133, to have high betweenness centrality (see Table 4).
Hagen et al. 11

Table 4. The Top ten Entities With High Betweenness Centrality.

Betweenness
Account Name Centrality Description of the Account
MackayIM .053 Joined April 2013, 8,258 followers, PhD, and adjunct associate professor at the
Australian Infectious Diseases Research Centre (AID) with a focus on
infectious diseases
neil_bodie .040 CEO, developing disruptive technology for infectious agents/Zika and
autoimmune diseases
Ssimms777 .032 Democrat, a Hilary Clinton supporter, believes in prochoice, proequal pay,
and civil rights for all
greg_folkers .030 Joined May 2009, 2,239 followers, he works at the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and direct the NIAID Immediate Office of
the Director and a core staff of senior-level staff members with NIAID-wide
program coordination and operations responsibilities
maiamajumder .026 PhD candidate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Research
fellow at healthmap. Tufts University alum
courtchauncey .019 A supporter of Marco Rubio for FLSenator. Joined January 2012 has 2,254
followers
margo94 .015 Manufacturer and formulator luxury natural grooming products for family, a
Hillary Clinton supporter whose tweets criticize Donald Trump
RealMuckmaker .015 A Hillary Clinton supporter who started the twitter account May 2016, and
7,914 people are following him. He writes tweets supporting Hillary Clinton
and criticizing Donald Trump
LeChatNoire4 .015 A Hillary Clinton supporter, who joined twitter March 2014, and has 7,011
followers. Tweets are supporting Hillary Clinton and criticizing Donald
Trump
annie5133 .014 Retired, supporting progun safety laws, a Hillary Clinton supporter

Note. The gray background indicates political entities according to account holders’ description.

Other than courtchancey, who is a Marco Rubio supporter, most of these political actors are noted
Hillary Clinton supporters. As found above, most of the Marco Rubio supporters have high eigen-
vector centrality, which means having the ability to spread information, whereas Hillary Clinton
supporters function more as bridges that connect otherwise segregated groups. Political actors seem
to be highly influential in Zika communications on Twitter since the Zika outbreak was an important
political and policy issue at the time.

Discussion and Conclusions

In this article, we conducted content and network analyses to better understand influential topics and
actors in the social media dialog surrounding the 2015–2016 Zika outbreak in the United States. We
have synthesized these findings in Table 5.

Content of Tweets During the Spread of Zika in the United States

In a previous study, Fu et al. (2016) extracted the major topics expressed on Twitter regarding the
Zika outbreak using tweets collected between May 1, 2015, and April 2, 2016, while Zika was still a
relatively unknown phenomenon. According to their findings, the primary topics discussed on
Twitter included Zika’s impact (39.5%), reactions to Zika (23.7%), pregnancy and microcephaly
(18.1%), transmission routes such as sex or mosquitoes (10.7%), and case reports (8.1%).
Our data set includes a much shorter time span (12 days). However, our study captures tweets
during the summer of 2016 when Zika was spreading extremely fast in United States and other
12 Social Science Computer Review XX(X)

Table 5. Synthesizing the Influential Actors With Network Structure.

Senator Rubio supporters: Actors with high

eigenvector centrality (well connected to popular
actors) are mostly strong supporters of Florida
Senator Rubio’s primary campaign (Modularity
Class #8). Since the data collection took place
during the Republican primary, and since there
was heightened concern about Zika in Florida,
Senator Rubio supporters were actively engaged
with the Zika conversation

Visualization of the Eigenvector centrality

Note. Larger font size means higher eigenvector
centrality.
Authoritative Public Institutions: Twitterers with
high PageRank (highly endorsed by popular
Twitterers) are dispersed around the network.
Topologically, these actors are positioned in
between communities rather than in the middle
of one community. Also, these authoritative
actors are predominantly public institutions such
as WHO, WHOSEARO, White House, and HHS or
news agencies such as TheDailyEdge, NYTHealth,
and NYTScience.

Visualization of the PageRank

Note. Larger font size means higher PageRank values.
Boundary spanners: Most of the top Twitterers with
high betweenness centrality are in the Modularity
Class #7, which is located in the middle of the
network. Tweets created by these entities are
highly retweeted: 47% of retweets in our sample
belong to the Modularity Class #7. Distinctively,
many tweets circulated in Modularity Class #7 are
about scientific news. In fact, several top actors
with high betweenness centrality are experts in
infectious diseases research

Visualization of the betweenness centrality

Note: Larger font size means higher betweenness
centrality.
Hagen et al. 13

countries. The findings of our study differ from Fu et al. (2016), as the major topics include the
spread of Zika (36%), criticism of Congress (25%), news about Zika (19%), scientific information
about Zika (13%), bee killing (4%), and government outreach (3%). These differences may be
attributed to the timing of our data collection efforts. While Fu et al.’s (2016) study reflects
Twitterers’ initial effort to understand the new disease, the topics in our data set reflect concerns
about the spread of the Zika virus as well as prevention measures and expressed frustration with the
slow Congressional response. At the same time, similar to Fu et al. (2016), the Twitterers are
interested in sharing news about the Zika virus, such as symptoms, worries of parents-to-be, and
stories about pregnant women who are infected with Zika.

Sharing Scientific Information on Twitter

Twitter is known as a popular platform that circulates scientific information more than other online
platforms. For instance, Twitter mentioned scientific studies about 4 times more frequently than
online news media and 21 times more than public Facebook pages (Hitlin, 2016). Our study also
supports this by demonstrating a high volume of discussions related to scientific inquiries, such as
vaccine development and the effects of the Zika virus. In fact, a Pew study by Hitlin (2016) found
that the sixth most highly circulated scientific article on Twitter in 2016 was “Zika Virus and Birth
Defects—Reviewing the Evidence for Causality,” published in the New England Journal of Med-
icine (Rasmussen, Jamieson, Honein, & Petersen, 2016).
Most of the tweets about scientific news were initiated by Twitterers in Modularity Class #7.
We also found that experts affiliated with reputable institutions who held scientific credentials
were likely to function as boundary spanners, demonstrating the ability to spread information
quickly throughout the Twitter network. Experts on infectious disease such as MackayIM, who
works at Australian Infectious Diseases Research Center, and greg_folkers, who works at the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, are good examples. Engaging with poten-
tial boundary spanners to distribute scientific information could be an impactful approach to
communicating with the public during emergencies since they play key roles in acquiring,
translating, and disseminating information throughout their own social networks (Whelan,
Golden, & Donnellan, 2011).

Practical Implications
These findings are important for the development of communication strategies during public health
emergencies, where the rapid dissemination of reliable information can be crucial. The diffusion of
false information has been one of the major concerns in adopting Twitter for emergency commu-
nications. Our findings show some evidence of Twitterers’ efforts to ensure the spread of trust-
worthy, scientific information during public emergencies. Similarly, Mendoza, Poblete, and Castillo
(2010) showed that Twitterers more often raise questions on false rumors compared to confirmed
truths in comparison to other social media platform users (Mendoza, Poblete, & Castillo, 2010). In
our case, Twitterers seemed to have exerted some efforts to diffuse reliable information by retweet-
ing scientific content distributed by reputable experts on infectious disease, rather than distributing
second-hand and unverifiable information. Further, government institutions such as the White
House, CDC, and HHSGov were found to be highly authoritative and trustworthy sources. For
practitioners, connecting these authoritative information sources with boundary spanners may
ensure that the public receives trustworthy, scientific information quickly. Our findings provide a
snapshot of a particular case, which can help in the development of strategies for responding to
future public health emergencies. For example, public-facing organizations can benefit by under-
standing the kinds of content that is transmitted through specific social media platforms and by
14 Social Science Computer Review XX(X)

identifying key participants who are authoritative, popular, and connected to disparate communities
in order to efficiently communicate with the public.
The influence of political actors in the Twitter network highlights an apparent reality that health
communication is inherently political. Our findings support the claim that official actors and public-
facing organizations are increasingly utilizing social media as a means of managing acute public
health emergencies and crisis scenarios. As public consumption of traditional media declines, these
findings seem to indicate that emerging technologies such as social media are filling the commu-
nication void, particularly in emergency scenarios.
While our study focuses exclusively on the Zika virus outbreak, we expect that the communica-
tion pattern observed in this case may share similarities with other emergency scenarios, such as
public health scares and natural disasters. As noted earlier, crisis communication on social media can
have dangerous consequences—such as the misidentification of suspects in a killing, as was the case
during the Boston Marathon bombings. Our study highlights a way to identify highly trusted actors
within a network, so that public-facing organizations can depend on them for communicating with
the public during emergencies.

Limitations and Future Research

Of course, there are a number of limitations to this study and many unanswered questions remain
about crisis communications on Twitter and throughout social media more broadly. Twitter users
are not representative of the entire population, and this study does not suggest that patterns found
here would prevail if the entire population was examined (Gottfried & Shearer, 2016; Mitchell &
Guskin, 2013). Therefore, the choice of topics discussed on Twitter may be influenced by certain
professional and political dynamics (Smith et al., 2014). However, we believe our study does
accurately reflect the communication pattern of Twitter and has the potential to be useful for crisis
communications during public health emergencies. Moreover, the particular influential Twitterers
observed in the network structure of this study are specific to the Twitter platform. Future studies
may include other social media platforms such as Facebook, whose popularity is known to be
higher than that of Twitter.
Methodologically, the initial filtering of nodes to reduce dimensions can raise a question as to
whether this filtering process will result in bias. Our validation experiments show that the filtering
does not seem to cause notable bias. We have identified and compared the top ten Twitterers with
high PageRank using the original 112,165 nodes and the filtered 593 nodes. Of the top ten Twit-
terers, seven of them were identical, which indicates that filtering from 112,165 to 593 nodes did not
dramatically impact the outcomes, and it was necessary in order to achieve the goal of reducing data
dimensionality to enable the analysis. Although it was not our main focus of this study, the issue of
filtering and the use of thresholds to reduce data dimensionality are important issues in big data
analysis that require further attention in future studies.
While focusing on specific research questions in this analysis, we have chosen to defer other
important inquires for future studies. In particular, we plan to investigate the impact of multimedia-
use and content on retweetability. This future study will look at the extent to which embedded media
content is circulated throughout social networks and how it passes among members of disparate
communities. We also plan to pursue a more extensive qualitative analysis of Zika-related tweets,
focusing specifically on how messaging differs across unique communities.
Despite these limitations, our study detected naturally occurring communities in the Zika retweet
network and six predominant themes emerged within these tweets. In an effort to identify influential
actors within the social network, we focused on the criteria of popularity, authority, and connectiv-
ity. The most popular actors included many of Senator Rubio’s supporters. The most authoritative
actors included primarily public institutions, individuals associated with public institutions, as well
Hagen et al. 15

as news media outlets that specialize in health and science. The primary boundary spanners (i.e.,
those who connect diverse communities that would not otherwise be connected) were typically
political activists and those with professional/subject matter expertise in infectious diseases. We
also noted efforts by influential Twitterers to redistribute reliable and trustworthy information. We
hope that researchers and practitioners will be able to utilize the network analysis we have carried
out to aid in communication efforts during future public emergencies.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article.

Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Supplemental Material
The online [appendices/data supplements/etc.] are available at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/
0894439317721985.

References
Acar, A., & Muraki, Y. (2011). Twitter for crisis communication: Lessons learned from Japan’s tsunami
disaster. International Journal of Web Based Communities, 7, 392–402.
American Red Cross. (2012, July 10). Social media in disasters and emergencies. The American Red Cross.
Retrieved from a1881.g.akamai.net/7/1881/ . . . /redcross . . . /Social-Media-Disasters-Emergencies.pptx
Barberá, P. (2015). Birds of the same feather tweet together: Bayesian ideal point estimation using Twitter data.
Political Analysis, 23, 76–91.
Barberá, P., Jost, J. T., Nagler, J., Tucker, J. A., & Bonneau, R. (2015). Tweeting from left to right: Is online
political communication more than an echo chamber? Psychological Science. doi:10.1177/
0956797615594620
Bastian, M., Heymann, S., & Jacomy, M. (2009). Gephi: An open source software for exploring and manip-
ulating networks. International Conference on Web and Social Media, 8, 361–362.
Bernier, S. (2013, August 21). Social media and disasters: Best practices and lessons learned. Presenta-
tion, American Red Cross Disaster Preparedness Summit. Retrieved from https://www.redcross.org/
images/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m22442828_Social_Media_-_Suzanne_Bernier_-_SB_Crisis_
Consulting.pdf
Bird, D., Ling, M., & Haynes, K. (2012). Flooding Facebook? The use of social media during the Queensland
and Victorian floods. Australian Journal of Emergency Management, 27, 27–33.
Blondel, V. D., Guillaume, J.-L., Lambiotte, R., & Lefebvre, E. (2008). Fast unfolding of communities in large
networks. Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment, 2008, P10008. doi:10.1088/1742-5468/
2008/10/P10008
Bonacich, P. (2007). Some unique properties of eigenvector centrality. Social Networks, 29, 555–564.
Borgatti, S. P., & Halgin, D. S. (2011). Analyzing affiliation networks. In J. Scott & P. Carrington (Eds.) The
SAGE handbook of social network analysis (pp. 417–433). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. doi:10.4135/
9781446294413.n28
Brandes, U. (2001). A faster algorithm for betweenness centrality. The Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 25,
163–177. doi:10.1080/0022250X.2001.9990249
Brin, S., & Page, L. (1998). The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual web search engine. In Proceedings of the
Seventh International Conference on World Wide Web 7 (pp. 107–117). Amsterdam, the Netherlands:
Elsevier Science Publishers B. V. Retrieved from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id¼297805.297827
16 Social Science Computer Review XX(X)

Burke, M., Marlow, C., & Lento, T. (2009). Feed me: Motivating newcomer contribution in social network
sites. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 945–954).
New York, NY: ACM. doi:10.1145/1518701.1518847
Canright, G. S., & Engø-Monsen, K. (2006). Spreading on networks: A topographic view. Complexus, 3,
131–146. doi:10.1159/000094195
Caverlee, J., Liu, L., & Webb, S. (2008). Socialtrust: Tamper-resilient trust establishment in online commu-
nities. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital libraries (pp. 104–114). ACM.
Retrieved from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id¼1378908
CBS News. (2013, April 24). Social media and the search for the Boston bombing suspects. CBS News.
Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/social-media-and-the-search-for-theboston-bombing-
suspects/
Choi, S., & Park, H. W. (2013). An exploratory approach to a Twitter-based community centered on a
political goal in South Korea: Who organized it, what they shared, and how they acted. New Media &
Society. doi:10.1177/1461444813487956
Conover, M. D., Goncalves, B., Ratkiewicz, J., Flammini, A., & Menczer, F. (2011). Predicting the political
alignment of Twitter users. In 2011 IEEE Third International Conference on Privacy, Security, Risk and
Trust (PASSAT) and 2011 IEEE Third International Conference on Social Computing (SocialCom) (pp.
192–199). doi:10.1109/PASSAT/SocialCom.2011.34
Conrado, S. P., Neville, K., Woodworth, S., & O’Riordan, S. (2016). Managing social media uncer-
tainty to support the decision making process during emergencies. Journal of Decision Systems, 25,
171–181.
Cool, C. T., Claravall, C., Hall, J. L., Taketani, K., Zepeda, J. P., Gehner, M., & Lawe-Davies, O. (2015). Social
media as risk communication tool following Typhoon Haiyan. Western Pacific Surveillance and Response,
6. doi:10.5365/wpsar.v6i0.365
Corbin, J. M., & Strauss, A. (1990). Grounded theory research: Procedures, canons, and evaluative criteria.
Qualitative Sociology, 13, 3–21. doi:10.1007/BF00988593
Dapena, K., & Alcantara, C. (2017, February 17). Daily Florida Zika virus tracker. Retrieved February 17,
2017, from http://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-care/article66790817.html
Easley, D., & Keinberg, J. (2010). Networks, crowds, and markets: Reasoning about a highly connected world
(1st ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Fortunato, S. (2010). Community detection in graphs. Physics Reports, 486, 75–174. doi:10.1016/j.physrep.
2009.11.002
Franceschet, M. (2011). PageRank: Standing on the shoulders of giants. Communications of the ACM, 54,
92–101.
Freeman, L. C. (1978). Centrality in social networks conceptual clarification. Social Networks, 1, 215–239. doi:
10.1016/0378-8733(78)90021-7
Fu, K.-W., Liang, H., Saroha, N., Tse, Z. T. H., Ip, P., & Fung, I. C.-H. (2016). How people react to Zika virus
outbreaks on Twitter? A computational content analysis. American Journal of Infection Control, 44,
1700–1702. doi:10.1016/j.ajic.2016.04.253
Fung, I. C.-H., Tse, Z. T. H., Cheung, C.-N., Miu, A. S., & Fu, K.-W. (2014). Ebola and the social media. The
Lancet, 384, 2207. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(14)62418 -1
Giménez-Garcıa, J. M., Thakkar, H., & Zimmermann, A. (2016). Assessing trust with PageRank in the web of
data. In PROFILES 2016 3rd International Workshop on Dataset PROFIling and fEderated Search for
Linked Data. Retrieved from http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1597/PROFILES2016_paper5.pdf
Golbeck, J. (2013). Analyzing the social web (1st ed.). Waltham, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.
Gottfried, J., & Shearer, E. (2016, May 26). News use across social media platforms 2016. Retrieved from
http://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2016/
Graham, M. W., Avery, E. J., & Park, S. (2015). The role of social media in local government crisis commu-
nications. Public Relations Review, 41, 386–394.
Hagen et al. 17

Groshek, J., & Al-Rawi, A. (2013). Public sentiment and critical framing in social media content during the
2012 US presidential campaign. Social Science Computer Review, 31, 563–576. doi:10.1177/
0894439313490401
Guskin, E., & Hitlin, P. (2012, November 6). Hurricane sandy and twitter. Retrieved from http://www.
journalism.org/2012/11/06/hurricane-sandy-and-twitter/
Henn, S. (2013). Social media’s rush to judgment in the Boston Bombings. NPR, April 23, 2013. Retrieved
from http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/04/23/178556269/SocialMedias-Rush-To-
Judgment-In-The-Boston-Bombings
Hitlin, P. (2016). Health issues topped the list of scientific studies reaching wide audiences in 2016. Retrieved
from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/12/28/health-issues-topped-the-list-of-scientific-studies-
reaching-wide-audiences-in-2016/
Houston, J. B., Hawthorne, J., Perreault, M. F., Park, E. H., Goldstein Hode, M., Halliwell, M. R., . . . Griffith,
S. A. (2014). Social media and disasters: A functional framework for social media use in disaster
planning, response, and research. Disasters, 39, 1–22. doi:10.1111/disa.12092
Hughes, A. L., & Palen, L. (2009). Twitter adoption and use in mass convergence and emergency events.
International Journal of Emergency Management, 6, 248–260.
Hughes, A. L., & Palen, L. (2012). The evolving role of the public information officer: An examination of
social media in emergency management. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 9.
doi:10.1515/1547-7355.1976
Hughes, A. L., Palen, L., Sutton, J., Liu, S. B., & Vieweg, S. (2008). Site-seeing in disaster: An examination of
on-line social convergence. In Proceedings of the 5th International ISCRAM Conference. Citeseer.
Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download? doi:10.1.1.157.3104&rep¼rep1&type¼pdf
Hughes, A. L., & Tapia, A. H. (2015). Social media in crisis: When professional responders meet digital
volunteers. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 12, 679–706.
Jacomy, M., Venturini, T., Heymann, S., & Bastian, M. (2014). ForceAtlas2, a continuous graph layout
algorithm for handy network visualization designed for the Gephi software. PLOS One, 9, e98679. doi:
10.1371/journal.pone.0098679
Jin, Y., Liu, B. F., & Austin, L. L. (2014). Examining the role of social media in effective crisis management:
The effects of crisis origin, information form, and source on publics’ crisis responses. Communication
Research, 41, 74–94.
Kapucu, N., Arslan, T., & Demiroz, F. (2010). Collaborative emergency management and national emergency
management network. Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal, 19, 452–468.
Kim, K.-S., Sin, S.-C. J., & Tsai, T.-I. (2014). Individual differences in social media use for information
seeking. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 40, 171–178. doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2014.03.001
Krippendorff, K. H. (2012). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology (3rd ed.). Los Angeles, CA:
Sage.
Lachlan, K. A., Spence, P. R., Lin, X., Najarian, K., & Greco, M. D. (2016). Social media and crisis manage-
ment: CERC, search strategies, and Twitter content. Computers in Human Behavior, 54, 647–652.
Latonero, M., & Shklovski, I. (2011). Emergency management, Twitter, and social media evangelism. Inter-
national Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, 3, 1–16.
Lusseau, D., & Newman, M. E. J. (2004). Identifying the role that animals play in their social networks.
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 271, S477–S481.
Madden, M., & Zickuhr, K. (2011, August 26). 65% of online adults use social networking sites. Retrieved from
http://www.pewinternet.org/2011/08/26/65-of-online-adults-use-social-networking-sites/
McSweeney, P. J. (2009). Gephi network statistics. Presentado En Google Summer of Code. Recuperado a
Partir de Http://Gephi. Org/Google-Soc/Gephi-Netalgo. Pdf. Retrieved from http://web.ecs.syr.edu/
*pjmcswee/gephi.pdf
Mendoza, M., Poblete, B., & Castillo, C. (2010). Twitter under crisis: Can we trust what we RT? In Proceedings of the
First Workshop on Social Media Analytics (pp. 71–79). New York, NY: ACM. doi:10.1145/1964858.1964869
18 Social Science Computer Review XX(X)

Merchant, R. M., Elmer, S., & Lurie, N. (2011). Integrating social media into emergency-preparedness efforts.
New England Journal of Medicine, 365, 289–291.
Mergel, I. (2012). The social media innovation challenge in the public sector. Information Polity, 17, 281–292.
Mitchell, A., & Guskin, E. (2013, November 4). Twitter news consumers: Young, mobile and educated.
Retrieved from http://www.journalism.org/2013/11/04/twitter-news-consumers-young-mobile-and-
educated/
Nelson, L. D., Spence, P. R., & Lachlan, K. A. (2009). Learning from the media in the aftermath of a crisis:
Findings from the Minneapolis bridge collapse. Electronic News, 3, 176–192. doi:10.1080/
19312430903300046
Newman, M. E. J. (2006). Modularity and community structure in networks. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, 103, 8577–8582. doi:10.1073/pnas.0601602103
Newman, M. E. (2008). The mathematics of networks. Retrieved November 15, 2016, from http://citeseerx.ist.
psu.edu/viewdoc/download? doi¼10.1.1.131.8175&rep¼rep1&type¼pdf
Palen, L., & Liu, S. B. (2007). Citizen communications in crisis: Anticipating a future of ICT-supported
public participation. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
(pp. 727–736). ACM. Retrieved from http://dl.acm.org.ezproxy.lib.usf.edu/citation.cfm?id¼1240736
Pechta, L. E., Brandenburg, D. C., & Seeger, M. W. (2010). Understanding the dynamics of emergency
communication: Propositions for a four-channel model. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency
Management, 7. doi:10.2202/1547-7355.1671
Perrin, A. (2015). Social media usage: 2005-2015. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/08/
social-networking-usage-2005-2015/
Rasmussen, S. A., Jamieson, D. J., Honein, M. A., & Petersen, L. R. (2016). Zika virus and birth defects—
Reviewing the evidence for causality. New England Journal of Medicine, 374, 1981–1987. doi:10.1056/
NEJMsr1604338
R Core Team. (2015). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation
for Statistical Computing. Retrieved from http://www.R-project.org/
René, P. L. (2016). The influence of social media on emergency management. PA Times. Retrieved from http://
patimes.org/influence-social-media-emergency-management/
Rogers, E. M. (1995). Diffusion of innovations (4th ed.). New York, NY: Free Press.
Simon, T., Goldberg, A., & Adini, B. (2015). Socializing in emergencies—A review of the use of social media
in emergency situations. International Journal of Information Management, 35, 609–619. doi:10.1016/
j.ijinfomgt.2015.07.001
Simon, T., Goldberg, A., Aharonson-Daniel, L., Leykin, D., & Adini, B. (2014). Twitter in the cross fire–The
use of social media in the Westgate Mall terror attack in Kenya. PLOS One, 9, 1–11.
Smith, M. A., Rainie, L., Shneiderman, B., & Himelboim, I. (2014, February 20). Mapping Twitter topic
networks: From polarized crowds to community clusters. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/
2014/02/20/mapping-twitter-topic-networks-from-polarized-crowds-to-community-clusters/
Spence, P. R., & Lachlan, K. A. (2005). Biological terrorism and the local community: Communication needs
and response. In T. L. Sellnow & R. S. Littlefield (Eds.), Lessons learned about protecting America’s food
supply (p. 70). Fargo, North Dakota, USA: Institute for Regional Studies, North Dakota State University.
Starbird, K., Dailey, D., Walker, A. H., Leschine, T. M., Pavia, R., & Bostrom, A. (2015). Social media, public
participation, and the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: An
International Journal, 21, 605–630. doi:10.1080/10807039.2014.947866
Steelman, T. A., Nowell, B., Bayoumi, D., & McCaffrey, S. (2014). Understanding information exchange
during disaster response: Methodological insights from infocentric analysis. Administration & Society, 46,
707–743. doi:10.1177/0095399712469198
Stewart, M. C., & Wilson, B. G. (2016). The dynamic role of social media during Hurricane# Sandy: An
introduction of the STREMII model to weather the storm of the crisis lifecycle. Computers in Human
Behavior, 54, 639–646.
Hagen et al. 19

Thackeray, R., Neiger, B. L., Smith, A. K., & Van Wagenen, S. B. (2012). Adoption and use of social media
among public health departments. BMC Public Health, 12, 242.
Webb, H., Burnap, P., Procter, R., Rana, O., Stahl, B. C., Williams, M., . . . Jirotka, M. (2016). Digital
wildfires: Propagation, verification, regulation, and responsible innovation. ACM Transactions on
Information Systems (TOIS), 34, 15.
Whelan, E., Golden, W., & Donnellan, B. (2011). Digitising the R&D social network: Revisiting the techno-
logical gatekeeper. Information Systems Journal, 23, 197–218. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2575.2011.00384.x
Xu, W. W., Chiu, I.-H., Chen, Y., & Mukherjee, T. (2015). Twitter hashtags for health: Applying network and
content analyses to understand the health knowledge sharing in a Twitter-based community of practice.
Quality & Quantity, 49, 1361–1380. doi:10.1007/s11135-014-0051-6
Yates, D., & Paquette, S. (2011). Emergency knowledge management and social media technologies: A
case study of the 2010 Haitian earthquake. International Journal of Information Management, 31,
6–13. doi:10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2010.10.001
Yoo, E., Rand, W., Eftekhar, M., & Rabinovich, E. (2016). Evaluating information diffusion speed and its
determinants in social media networks during humanitarian crises. Journal of Operations Management, 45,
123–133.
Yun, G. W., Morin, D., Park, S., Joa, C. Y., Labbe, B., Lim, J., . . . Hyun, D. (2016). Social media and flu:
Media Twitter accounts as agenda setters. International Journal of Medical Informatics, 91, 67–73.
doi:10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2016.04.009

Author Biographies
Loni Hagen is an assistant professor at the University of South Florida’s School of Information. Her current
research interests are in use of data mining for policy decision-making in the domains of health emergency
communication, e-participation, privacy, and cybersecurity.
Thomas Keller is a postdoctoral researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His current interests are in
the use of data mining and machine learning to investigate questions in computational and evolutionary
biology, health analytics, and network dynamics in social media.
Stephen Neely is an assistant professor in the University of South Florida’s School of Public Affairs. He offers
courses in public policy and data analysis, and his current research interests are in K–12 education policy,
public affairs education, and the role of emerging technologies in local governance.
Nic DePaula is a PhD candidate at the University at Albany, State University of New York. His research
focuses on areas of information policy, social media, and e-government.

Claudia Robert-Cooperman is the director of the Health Science program at the University of South Florida.
Her research interests include health informatics, health information policy, and the use of medical information
and health analytics in decision-making.

View publication stats