This paper provides insight into research paper which performed an in-depth thematic analysis of tweets related to two infectious disease outbreaks of swine flu and Ebola. It then compared the results of individual cases to one another, and contrasted this to the sociological concept of the moral panic.

1. Moral Panic through the Lens of
Twitter: An Analysis of
Infectious Disease Outbreaks
Dr Wasim Ahmed
Wasim.Ahmed@Northumbria.ac.uk
Lecturer in Digital Business
@was3210
9th International Conference on Social Media & Society
Copenhagen, Denmark
20th July 2018

2. About Me
• Lecturer in Digital Business at Newcastle Business School at
Northumbria University (Newcastle).
• Recently completed a PhD at the Information School,
University of Sheffield.
• Examined infectious disease outbreaks of swine flu, Ebola and
Zika.

3. Background: Infectious Diseases and
Social Media
• Infectious disease outbreaks are a major public health threat
and have historically a very high mortality rate.
• Infectious disease outbreaks are likely to lead to members of
the public having views and opinions towards them.
• The online world is a space for people to share their unfiltered
views and opinions.
• Consequently, there has been research conducted on social
media platforms examining infectious diseases.

4. Gaps in Previous Knowledge
• Previous research has focused mostly on quantitative methods to
analyse Twitter data.
• In-depth qualitative methods such as thematic analysis have not
been applied to analyse data on infectious disease outbreaks on
social media.
• In-depth methods have the potential to uncover more themes, and
provide greater insight into data.

5. Research Questions
• What were the key discussions on Twitter during the peak of
the swine flu and Ebola outbreaks?
• What similarities and differences emerged by contrasting the
thematic findings of each of the outbreaks to one another?
• Does the response of users on Twitter mimic that of a moral
panic?

6. • Pragmatic with elements of interpretivism, and mostly qualitative.
• Sociological concepts such as Moral Panic were applied to the
results:
• “Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to
periods of moral panic. A condition, episode, person or group
of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal
values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and
stereotypical fashion by the mass media.” (See Cohen 2002).
• Moral Panics include the witch-craze that took place in the 16th and
17th centaury, the war on drugs, and the threat from terrorism.
Theoretical Aspects

7. • Purposeful samples (2 day periods) of Twitter data were retrieved (using
Twitter Firehose API) on Swine Flu and Ebola when Google Trends showed
there to be a peak in Web search queries.
• Dataset retrieved for Swine Flu consisted of 214,784 tweets during two-day
period of April 28th & April 29th 2009. Identified using the keywords ‘Swine
Flu’, ‘#SwineFlu’.
• Dataset that was retrieved relating to Ebola consisted of 181,110 tweets
produced during the period of 29th and 30th September 2014 identified
using the keyword ‘Ebola’.
Methods

8. • Datasets were filtered to remove duplicates and near-
duplicates and were entered into Nvivo for coding.
• A total of 7,678 tweets for Swine Flu, and 5,695 tweets
for Ebola, were read and labelled.
• A number of themes and sub-themes emerged from the
data and these were written up as detailed qualitative
reports.
Methods for Data Filtering

9. Results
Aspects
resembling a
moral panic
observed
throughout a
number of
themes.

10. • Fear of Travel
• Prevalence Monitoring
• Prevention Techniques
• Prevention Products
• Symptoms
• Medication
• References to Other Infection
or Disease
• Economic Impact of Swine Flu
• Frightening Scenarios
• Name Discussion
• Unfollowing User
Potential New Themes for Swine Flu
• Health Organisations (critical)
• Media Organisations (critical)
• Political Reference
• Obama
• Reference to Mexico and/or
Mexico City
• Reference to Mexicans
• Reference to Borders
• Pork Consumption
• Food Humour
• Humour Related to Pigs
• Popular Culture/Understanding
• Images used in Tweets
Thematic Analysis Strength
Potential new
themes also
occurred for
Ebola.

11. Limitations of Study
The study only examined tweets in the English language
and therefore is not a complete record of all users
tweeting.
Moreover, the study examined 2-day time periods,
therefore, there could be limitations from the conclusions
drawn from the data.
Media files such as images and video were not examined
as a part of this study which may have potentially excluded
certain content.
19/07/2018 © The University of Sheffield 11

12. Contribution of Current Study
Although previous research has examined Swine Flu,
Ebola, and Zika on Twitter. This was the first study to
use an in-depth methodology for the analysis of
Twitter data related to infectious disease outbreaks.
The study uncovered new discussions on Swine Flu,
and Ebola and demonstrated the potential of applying
the Sociological concept of the moral panic to the
results.
19/07/2018