Highlights
- •Health organizations can use Twitter to spread information about health threats.
- •The public and CDC are concerned about the spread of Zika and forms of transmission.
- •The public is concerned about the consequences of Zika for pregnant women and babies.
- •The CDC used Twitter to give information about Zika symptoms and educational content.
The arrival of the Zika virus in the United States caused much concern among the public
because of its ease of transmission and serious consequences for pregnant women and
their newborns. We conducted a text analysis to examine original tweets from the public
and responses from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during a live
Twitter chat hosted by the CDC. Both the public and the CDC expressed concern about
the spread of Zika virus, but the public showed more concern about the consequences
it had for women and babies, whereas the CDC focused more on symptoms and education.
Key Words
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References
- Areas with Zika.(Accessed from)http://www.cdc.gov/zika/geo/(Accessed February 26, 2016)Date: 2016
- Questions and answers: Zika virus infection and pregnancy.(Accessed from) (Accessed February 26, 2016)
- Zika virus.(Accessed from) (Accessed February 26, 2016)
- USA Today. CDC: 14 new reports of possible sexually transmitted Zika virus.(Accessed from) (Accessed February 26, 2016)
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: August 18, 2016
Footnotes
Conflicts of interest: None to report.
Identification
Copyright
© 2016 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
